The  Craft  Sinister 


Books  by 
GEORGE  ABEL  SCHREINER 

''The  Iron  Ration" 
{LA  DETRESSE  ALLEMANDE) 
"From  Berlin  to  Bagdad" 

"The  Craft  Sinister" 


Harper  &  Brothers,  New  York 

John  Momij,  London 

Librairie  Hachette,  Pari* 


THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

A  Diplomatico-Political  History  of  the  Great  War 

and  its  Causes  —  Diplomacy  and  International 

Politics  and  Diplomatists  as  Seen  at  Close 

Range  by  an  American  Newspaperman 

who  served  in  Central  Europe  as  War 

and  Political  Correspondent. 


By, 
GEORGE  ABEL  SCHREINER 

Author  of 

"The  Iron  Ration" 

(LA  DETRESSE  ALLEMANDE) 

"From  Berlin  to  Bagdad,"  etc. 


G.  ALBERT  GEYER 

Publisher 
New  York  City 


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THE   CRAFT  SINISTER 

Copyright,   1920,    George   A.   Schreiner 
All  Rights  Reserved 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
Published  May,  1920 


THE  ANCHOR  PRESS.  Inc. 

209  WMt  38Ui  Street 

New  YoA  City 


To  my  dear  friends 
Frieda  and  John  A.  BuUinger 


50024^ 


Tu  regere  imperio  populos  Romano,  memento. 
Hae  tibi  erunt  artes;  pasisque  imponere  morem, 
Parcere  subjectis,  et  debellare  superbos. 

—Virgil. 


INTRODUCTION 


I  AGREE  with  the  reader  that  it  seems  nonsensical  to  add  an  "Intro- 
duction" to  a  book,  which  already  has  a  "Preface."  But  in  this 
case  something  had  to  be  added,  and  if  I  have  taken  recourse  to 
the  word  "Introduction"  it  is  for  no  other  reason  than  that  this  word 
seemed  as  good  as  any  other. 

This  manuscript  has  been  making  the  rounds  of  publishing  houses 
for  a  year  now.  The  "Preface"  was  pre-dated  to  May  1,  1919.  In 
reality  the  book  was  completed  two  months  before  that,  and  repre- 
sented then  the  labor  of  about  eight  months,  not  counting  three  years 
of  work  in  Central  Europe  and  another  year  in  the  United  States — 
time  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  subject  and  the  experience  that  had 
to  be  gained. 

The  publishers  who  had  the  manuscript  were  afraid  to  publish  it. 
One  of  them  had  indeed  accepted  the  book  and  went  so  far  as  to 
place  it  among  his  "Announcements"  to  the  book  trade.  But  some- 
thing went  wrong.  Another  publisher  was  torn  by  his  emotions" 
for  the  space  of  weeks  and  finally  admitted  that  it  would  be  "too 
dangerous  for  his  firm"  to  publish  the  book.  The  man  feared  the  High 
and  Mighty  in  Washington,  and  well  he  might.  He  was  of  the  opinion 
that  there  was  involved  a  public  duty,  and  that  he  should  meet  it. 

"But,"  he  said,  "if  I  get  into  trouble  the  public  won't  thank  me." 

For  the  man  in  question  I  will  say  that  I  fully  sympathize  with 
him.  A  few  might  feel  different  about  it,  in  case  the  Most  Honorable 
Burleson  denied  the  mails  of  the  United  States  to  him,  but  the 
dear  public,  that  great  mass  of  people  which  is  swayed  only  by  the 
passions  of  the  day,  would,  in  its  fervor  to  please  the  Powerful,  do 
little  better  than  boycott  his  books  besides. 

But  it  seems  wholly  useless  to  go  into  further  details  of  this  sort. 
Publishing  is  a  business,  not  a  mission,  and  wise  indeed  the  publisher 
who  keeps  this  in  mind.  For  not  to  keep  it  in  mind  means  that  he  will 
not  be  a  publisher  for  long. 

I  have,  then,  no  quarrel  with  any  publisher.  In  fact,  I  sympa- 
thize with  all  of  them.  On  the  other  hand,  I  must  state  here  what 
has  been  stated,  if  for  no  other  reason,  then  for  the  one  that  here 


XI 


XII  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

and  there  the  reader  will  find  that  I  speak  of  things  and  conditions 
that  seem  a  little  anterior  now.  True  enough,  I  might  have  changed 
the  text  in  all  such  cases,  but  that  could  not  have  been  done  without 
interfering  seriously  with  the  general  aspect  of  the  book  and  the 
statements  it  contains.  Recent  events  have  somewhat  modified  this 
general  aspect — as  the  public  is  pleased  to  believe.  That  change, 
however,  is  merely  an  apparent  one.  It  is  not  real  in  any  sense  of 
the  word.  The  fact  of  today  should  remain  that  same  fact  even 
tomorrow,  and  he  who  views  in  the  light  of  a  subsequent  condition 
the  event  of  yesterday  may  write  an  interesting  book  but  not  a 
true  one. 

I  wish  to  state  in  this  connection  that  most  of  the  facts  concern- 
ing United  States  diplomatic  representatives  mentioned  in  this  book 
are  now  before  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  in  the  form  of  a 
Report,  dated  October  4,  1919,  which  Report  was  necessitated  by  the 
conduct  toward  me  of  the  State  Department  of  the  United  States, 
which,  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  the  incompetents  it  had  on  diplo- 
matic post  in  Central  Europe,  caused  my  virtual  internment  arid 
"black-listing"  at  home. 

Of  course,  the  Congress  has  taken  no  action  as  yet.  But  the 
State  Department  has.  For  the  purpose  of  "shutting  up"  so  dis- 
agreeable a  person,  Mr.  Lansing,  himself,  ultimately  and  personally 
caused  that  a  passport  was  issued  me,  without  many  of  the  usual 
requirements  being  exacted  of  me.  The  State  Department  felt  that 
in  August  of  1919  the  world  was  too  interested  in  other  troubles  than 
to  give  attention  to  things  that  had  taken  place  almost  three  years 
before.  It  also  expected  that  I  would  take  the  passport  in  lieu  of 
the  damages  I  claimed.  In  fact  it  was  mistaken.  For  the  Congress  I 
must  say,  however,  that  it  is  still  too  much  occupied  with  justifying 
and  vindicating  its  suicidal  conduct  during  the  War  years  to  find 
time  for  something  which  would  be  more  honest:  A  sweeping  inves- 
tigation of  the  State  Department,  its  diplomatic  chiefs  and  secretaries 
and  its  inexplicable  un-American  policies. 

I  further  wish  to  mention  that  I  have  called  upon  the  State 
Department  to  defend  itself  against  my  charges — to  no  avail.  For 
a  while  that  was  being  considered,  but,  unfortunately  for  the  State 
Department,  nothing  could  be  found  that  would  serve  as  a  pretext 
to  have  me  brought  in  contact  with  the  War  Acts  of  our  most 
complacent  Congress.  After  all  it  would  not  do  to  have  a  person  in- 
carcerated and  then  run  the  chance  of  having  his  trial  on  a  trumped-up 
accusation  bring  out  that  he  for  weeks  was  the  real  representative 
of  the  State  Department  at  Vienna  and  other  points  and  as  such 


INTRODUCTION  XIII 

prevented  the  summary  dismissal  of  two  ambassadors  of  the  United 
States  and  one  diplomatic  agent.  No  doubt,  that  would  have  been 
very  embarrassing,  especially  if  in  connection  with  that  it  would  have 
developed  that  one  of  these  ambassadors  was  for  months,  aye,  even 
years,  little  more  than  the  agent  in  a  Central  European  state  of  the 
Entente  governments  and  conducted  his  great  office  of  trust  accord- 
ingly. I  repeat,  that  all  this  would  have  been  most  embarrassing. 
To  that  alone  I  owe  the  freedom  of  movement  which  I  have  had  in 
the  last  two  years. 

Naturally,  the  good  men  in  the  State  Department  are  averse  to 
having  their  acts  reviewed  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that  diplomacy 
is  a  "Craft  Sinister."  They  regard  the  man  in  the  street  as  the 
"Layman,"  who  has  no  right  to  question  the  conduct  of  the  Sacer- 
dotals  of  Cypher  and  Code,  the  High  Priests  of  the  Temple  of 
National  Avarice,  the  Sacrificers  at  the  Altar  of  Blood  and  Famine. 
Diplomacy  is  a  Cult.  Some  look  upon  it  as  a  necessity.  If  the 
latter  conclusion  were  correct  we  would  have  to  assume  that  mankind 
can  manage  its  affairs  best  by  being  deceitful.  For,  in  the  words  of 
a  man  who  at  least  in  South  Africa  is  immortal :  All  diplomatists  are 
liars.  The  sooner  the  public  places  those  of  its  affairs  now  styled 
"diplomatic"  into  the  realm  of  decent  transactions  between  national 
units,  the  sooner  will  we  come  to  a  period  in  which  wars  will  be 
few  and  far  between.  And  that,  naturally,  applies  to  United  States 
diplomacy  and  diplomatists  as  much  as  to  any  other,  more  so  in  fact. 

With  the  proper  men  in  Central  Europe  the  government  of  the 
United  States  could  have  brought  the  Great  War  to  a  close  as  early 
as  1916,  and  again  in  April  of  1917.  The  citizen  here  and  elsewhere 
would  then  have  been  spared  many  of  the  hardships  that  have  come 
his  way.  Public  debts  would  be  smaller.  The  world,  instead  of 
continuing  to  tear  down  for  another  three  years  (and  the  end  of 
that  is  not  yet  in  isight)  would  have  started  to  build  up  again.  We 
would  not  then  have  been  obliged  to  see  everywhere  the  fatuous 
endeavor  of  the  radical  who  believes  that  the  fine  theories  of  the 
Socialist  philosopher  are  in  reality  applicable  in  a  world  where  any 
two  men  hold  three  opinions,  each  their  own,  and  one  for  their 
community  of  two. 

In  a  few  years  from  now  mankind  will  have  returned  to  that 
much  despised  socio-political  and  socio-economic  system  at  which 
our  ancestors  labored  so  long  without  finding  at  all  the  road  to 
Utopia.  From  that  moment  on  the  old  abuses  are  bound  to  rear 
their  heads  again,  and,  if  nothing  is  done  to  check  them,  our  posterity 
will  find  that,  after  all,  the  Great  War  was  as  unproductive  of  good 


XIV  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

lessons  as  the  Thirty  Years*  War  or  the  Convulsions  of  the  Corsican 
ward  politician  known  as  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  There  is  at  least  one 
good  lesson  we  should  take  to  heart  and  that  is  expressed  in  the 
words:  Curb  diplomacy,  and  if  at  all  passible  abolish  it. 

By  the  way,  what  has  become  of  "open  diplomacy"?  Has  the 
Wilson  administration  practiced  it  in  the  least?  Now,  as  before, 
the  public  learns  only  of  the  diplomatic  fait  accompli.  Of  the  barter- 
ing done  and  the  obligations  assumed  it  knows  nothing,  and  will 
know  nothing  so  long  as  it  does  not  insist  upon  being  a  full-fledged 
partner  to  the  deals  made  in  regard  to  its  substance  and  future 
weal. 

To  this  I  will  add  what  was  formerly  an  author's  note. 

The  might-have-beens  of  history  are  like  so  many  eggs  that  have 
been  scrambled  in  the  making  of  an  omelette — which  human  endeavor 
will  never  restore  to  the  primary  place  they  had  in  nature — the  state 
of  being  hatchable.  In  the  course  of  human  events  regret  is  of  as 
little  value  as  the  cackling  of  the  hen  that  sees  her  eggs  broken  on 
the  rim  of  the  skillet. 

The  purpose  of  this  book,  then,  must  be  sought  in  another  direc- 
tion. That  purpose  is  threefold.  It  is  the  writer's  intention  to  bring 
to  the  notice  of  the  public  everywhere  the  dangers  of  diplomacy,  as 
**  the  "art  of  negotiation"  has  been  practiced  hitherto  and  recently;  to 
point  out  to  the  public  of  the  United  States  in  what  respects  its  own 
diplomacy  was  found  wanting  and  defective,  and,  thirdly,  to  correct 
a  good  many  false  impressions  that  have  been  fostered  during  the 
Great  War  and  before. 

Some  of  the  chapters  of  this  book  go  into  the  modus  operandi 
of  "the  craft  sinister,"  and  depict  its  results,  while  others  go  more 
deeply  into  the  nature  and  methods  of  diplomatists.  Much  attention 
is  also  given  the  handmaiden  of  diplomacy — the  press.  What  cen- 
sorship was  and  what  it  strove  to  do  is  made  clear — astoundingly 
clear,  I  venture  to  think.  A  persistent  combat  on  my  part  with  cen- 
sorship, for  three  years  in  warring  Europe  and  two  in  the  warring 
United  States,  has  put  me  in  position  to  thoroughly  "spotlight"  its 
practices  and  motives.  When  left  untrammeled  the  press  does  well 
enough,  despite  the  assertions  of  the  chronic  uplifter;  it  becomes  the 
great  scourge  of  man  with  the  moment  it  passes  under  control. 

To  draw  an  accurate  and  clear  picture  of  diplomacy — the  craft 

sinister — was  not  possible  without  removing  much  of  the  obscurantism 

in  which  government  everywhere  veils  itself,  so  that  the  governed  may 

V   be  the  more  easily  led  to  subscribe  to  the  theory  of  governmental  infal- 

.  libility.    The  government  which  must  admit  that  it  can  err,  and  which 


INTRODUCTION  XV 

must  make  that  admission  in  times  of  stress,  does  not  remain  a  gov- 
ernment de  facto  for  long  thereafter.  On  the  other  hand,  the  public 
which  permits  its  government  to  arrogate  unto  the  theory  of  infalli- 
bility, a  "divine  right"  in  fact,  will  not  thereafter  be  far  from  disaster. 
It  is  best  in  life — in  all  its  phases  and  departments — to  look  at  things 
as  they  are,  not  as  we  wish  them  to  be. 

The  term  diplomacy  covers  for  my  purpose  the  international  activity 
of  statesman  and  envoy  alike,  and  the  reader  will  find  that  all  diplomatic 
contact  in  this  book  is  hostile — of  sinister  mien.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
I  deal  here  only  with  the  political  moves  and  countermoves  directly  related 
to,  or  responsible  for,  the  Great  War.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  book 
hardly  admits  that  diplomacy  is  other  than  bad — vile  and  vicious,  and  the 
question  will  be  asked :  How  can  that  be  ?  No  doubt,  there  was  a  certain 
amount  of  decency  and  fair  play  in  the  deals  made  between  members  of 
the  same  group — Triple  Entente  and  Triple  Alliance,  but  there  was  no 
such  thing  at  any  time  between  the  groups  themselves. 

In  weighing  acts  and  conduct  of  governments,  I  have  kept  in  mind 
that  nothing  is  harder  to  keep  in  focus  than  international  relations,  a  thing 
that  has  as  many  angles  and  aspects  as  its  constituents  have  moods  and 
desires.  A  strictly  impartial  attitude  has  been  observed  in  that  respect. 
Contrary  to  general  practice  during  the  Great  War,  I  have  accepted  Inter- 
national Law,  and  applied  it  here,  as  something  that  was  to  dispense  special 
favors  to  none.  To  be  sure  that  would  seem  rather  naive,  in  the  light  of 
what  happened  under  the  Orders  in  Privy  Council,  but  after  all  we  must 
have  something  upon  which  to  pin  our  hope.  I  have  assumed  that  the 
powerful  criminal  is  no  better  than  the  slinking  crook — ^the  shameless  cynic 
not  more  virtuous  than  the  blustering  brute. 
»  In  war  the  end  justifies  the  means — that  is  why  we  have  wars.     In 

diplomacy  the  purpose  hallows  the  method — that  is  why  we  have  diplomacy. 
Let  us  not  forget  that  so  long  as  we  have  diplomacy  we  will  have  wars. 
y  The  favorite  device  of  all  governments  of  the  World  Power  type  is: 
War  is  the  continuation  of  international  relations  by  other  means.  Brutal 
cynicism  could  not  be  carried  further  than  it  is  in  this  hypocritical  phrase 
of  the  bully  obliged  to  describe  his  overt  acts. 

It  would  seem  that  there  has  been  little  improvement  in  inter- 
national relations  in  the  last  three  thousand  years  or  so.  No  doubt, 
such  a  statement  could  be  rated  as  being  extremely  pessimistic,  and 
to  guard  against  that  I  have  incorporated  into  this  book  a  very  small 
amount  of  ancient  data  to  reinforce  certain  assertions  I  make.  There 
is,  for  instance,  the  literal  text  of  the  oldest  treaty  of  record,  con- 
cluded between  Rameses  II  and  Kheta-sar,  king  of  the  Hittites,  on 
Tybi  21st,  in  the  XXIst  year  of  the  reign  of  the  Pharaoh  in  question 


XVI  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

(November  28th,  1279  B.  C),  and  a  charming  account  of  "The  Battle 
of  Kadesh,"  by  either  a  press  agent  of  Rameses  II,  or  some  propaganda 
bureau  of  the  Royal  Egyptian  Government  of  Upper  and  Lower 
Egypt,  Ethiopia,  Judea,  Arabia  and  what  not.  I  am  sure  that  the 
reader  will  have  no  difficulty  at  all  seeing  the  appropriateness  of  the 
presence  of  these  rare  documents,  and  his  perspective  on  international 
contact  and  relations  and  war  will  be  further  extended  and  widened 
by  the  purely  biological  and  historical,  and  diplomatico-technical  mat- 
ter placed  before  him.  In  regard  to  the  latter  I  must  state  that 
within  the  space  of  a  single  book  it  was  quite  impossible  to  give  more 
than  what  is  absolutely  essential  to  an  understanding  of  things,  sys- 
tems, conditions  and  policies. 

Since  it  is  proper  that  men  should  acknowledge  to  whom  they 
owe  their  information,  I  must  state  that  in  my  case  thanks  are  due 
to  many.  To  give  the  names  of  all  of  them  would  be  impossible  for 
the  reason  that  I  would  place  in  jeopardy  the  interests  and  welfare 
of  scores — of  men  who  spoke  to  me  of  things  they  were  not  "sup- 
posed to  know."  Wherever  it  has  been  possible  I  have  mentioned 
my  authority. 

To  "Historicus"  I  am  obliged  for  some  information  on  the  Balkan 
subjects  treated,  and  to  "The  Nation"  and  Prof.  R.  C.  McGrane,  of 
the  University  of  Cincinnati,  for  the  text  of  the  Sixteenth  Century 
League  of  Nations.  THE  AUTHOR. 

New  York,  January  25,  1920. 


PREFACE 


MUCH  has  been  heard  recently  of  open  diplomacy  and  open 
covenant,  openly  arrived  at.  While  the  Great  War  v^as  still 
on,  the  public  of  the  United  States  was  led  to  believe  that  at 
the  Peace  Conference  all  discussion  would  be  done  in  the  limelight  of 
publicity.  Yet  such  was  not  the  case.  The  Paris  Conference  was  a 
star  chamber  proceeding  of  the  worst  sort.  Only  its  edicts  have  become 
known,  despite  the  promises  that  had  been  made,  despite  the  fact  that 
the  fate  of  neutral  and  foe  alike  was  under  treatment.  Diplomacy  of 
the  old  type  was  again  employed.  Diplomacy  started  in  again  where  it 
had  left  off — for  the  good  reason  that  it  had  never  left  off. 

It  has  been  said,  and  rightly  so,  that  war  is  a  continuation  of 
international  relations  with  other  means.  In  the  past  diplomacy  has 
used  military  strength  as  a  means  of  persuasion  in  times  of  peace 
and  as  the  instrument  of  coercion  in  days  of  war.  A  diplomacy  not 
backed  by  a  large  and  efficient  military  establishment  is  likely  to  be 
a  good  diplomacy.  Instead  of  force  of  arms  it  must  employ  the  force 
of  morality.  Good  conduct,  indeed,  is  its  only  argument.  It  must  do 
as  it  would  be  done  by.  Intrigue  and  machination  may  not  be  indulged 
in,  because  in  the  end  there  will  be  no  large  army  and  navy  to 
prevent  a  reckoning  or  obviate  the  liquidation  of  the  claims  that  will 
be  made  by  thoise  who  consider  themselves  injured.  The  diplomatist 
of  the  small  nation  is  obliged  to  work  without  the  "prestige"  that  is 
at  once  incentive  and  tool  for  the  activity  of  the  man  representing 
the  "World  Power."  The  "small  diplomatist"  must  limit  his  endeavor 
to  the  continuation  of  good  relations.  And,  as  a  rule,  he  succeeds. 
Unfortunately,  the  diplomatic  representative  of  the  World  Power 
is  not  in  the  same  position.  For  all  of  the  things  he  does,  be  they 
good  or  bad,  he  has  the  sanction  of  what  has  been  termed  his  country's 
needs.  Expansion  in  any  direction  and  of  any  sort  is  considered  an 
absolute  necessity  by  any  large  state,  and  within  the  frame  of  that 
its  diplomatists  may  work  and  intrigue  to  heart's  content.  The  as- 
surance that  ultimately  a  declaration  of  war  will  wipe  out  every 
mistake  he  may  have  made,  every  questionable  practice  he  has  en- 
gaged in,  is  to  the  diplomatist  of  the  World  Power  the  very  invitation 

xvii 


XVIII  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

to  do  all  those  things  which  the  representative  of  the  small  state 
cannot  afford  to  do,  except  when  on  the  defensive. 

Nothing  has  happened  so  far  at  Paris  that  could  cause  the  student 
of  human  affairs  to  believe  that  diplomacy  of  the  big-power  sort 
has  been  abandoned.  Of  course,  there  are  those  who  would  have  the 
public  take  a  different  view.  Yet  the  fact  is  that  nothing  has  been 
done  so  far  that  could  cause  the  initiate  in  diplomacy  and  international 
relations  to  be  at  all  optimistic.  To  give  a  thing  a  new  name  is  of 
little  consequence,  and  the  poorest  sort  of  anticlimax  for  a  catastrophe 
that  cost  the  world  7,254,000  of  its  best  lives  and  about  $450,000,000,000 
in  wealth.  There  are  some  conservatives  who  marvel  that  so  much 
has  been  done.  The  tsensible  human  being  must  be  astonished  that  so 
little  has  really  been  accomplished. 

Mihi  cur  a  futuri! 

It  should  not  be  impossible  to  live  without  so-called  diplomacy 
some  day.  Those  who  have  the  welfare  of  mankind  at  heart  must 
wish  that  this  day  will  come  soon.  But  right  now  this  sort  of  diplo- 
macy is  still  with  us,  and  if  left  to  itself  it  will,  before  long,  again 
revert  to  the  practices  for  which  it  has  become  truly  and  deservedly 
odious.  Covenants  arrived  at  may  not  encourage  another  sowing 
\  of  secret  treaties,  but  they  cannot  prevent  the  making  of  ententes, 
nor  can  they  curb  those  who  engage  for  purposes  of  their  own  in 
the  fostering  of  misunderstanding  and  hatred  between  peoples. 

When  Mr.  Wilson  declared  himself  opposed  to  secret  diplomacy 
he  evidently  had  realized  to  what  extent  hidden  intrigue  was  responsi- 
ble for  the  riot  of  carnage  and  destruction  that  swept  over  Europe. 
His  many  utterances  on  this  subject  leave  no  doubt  as  to  this.  Un- 
fortunately, he  was  not  in  a  position  to  change  overnight  a  condition 
that  had  prevailed  for  centuries,  nor  has  he  been  able  to  apply  to  his 
own  relations  with  foreign  governments  the  valuable  lessons  history 
taught  him.  The  fact  that  the  executive  with  plein  pouvoir  of  a  strong 
nation  of  100,000,000  was  unable  to  shape  his  own  diplomatic  course 
so  that  it  might  agree  with  his  views,  as  stated  by  himself,  shows 
how  strong  and  well  entrenched  the  modern  system  of  diplomacy  is. 
The  President  of  the  United  States,  moreover,  was  so  represented  in 
most  of  the  capitals  of  Europe,  especially  in  Berlin,  Vienna,  Constanti- 
nople, Sofia  and  The  Hague,  that  neither  he  nor  the  governments  to 
whom  his  diplomatic  representatives  were  accredited  benefited  in  any 
degree  thereby.  The  chiefs  of  the  American  diplomatic  missions  at  those 
posts  were  not  only  untrained  for  their  duties,  but  were  in  addition  unsuited 
temperamentally. 


PREFACE  XIX 

With  the  possible  exception  of  a  single  individual  these  chefs  de 
mission  were  sent  abroad  by  Mr.  Wilson  and  his  party  in  return  for 
'  favors  done.  In  some  instances  the  favor  consisted  of  substantial 
/  contributions  made  to  the  campaign  fund  of  the  Democratic  Party. 
That  these  men  had  given  their  money  in  order  that  the  Democratic 
Party  might  be  successful  at  the  polls  is  in  itself  nothing  unusual  or 
dishonorable.  Campaign  contributions  are  one  of  the  socio-political 
evils  we  must  put  up  with.  Nor  is  there  anything  reprehensible  in 
doing  such  donors  a  return  favor.  It  cannot  even  be  said  that  appoint- 
ing them  ambassadors  and  ministers  was  a  grave  error.  We  must 
bear  in  mind  that  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  War  it  was 
generally  assumed  that  ambassadors  and  ministers  were  in  reality 
little  more  than  the  messenger  boys  of  state  departments  and  foreign 
offices.  If  blame  attaches  to  any  one  at  all  in  this  respect  it  is  the 
general  public  that  must  bear  it. 

To  lay  into  the  hands  of  political  favorites  the  power  of  peace  or 
war  is  reckless  procedure,  to  say  the  least.  But  it  was  done — largely 
because,  I  believe,  few  of  us  recognized  that  danger  was  associated 
with  the  practice.  With  our  notion  that  diplomatists  were  the  mes- 
senger boys  of  governments  went  the  delusion  that  wars  would  be 
short  and  parlor  affairs.  So  much  had  been  said  concerning  universal 
peace  that  most  of  us  had  been  lulled  into  a  false  sense  of  security. 
The  few  who  saw  in  the  blatant  peace  apostles  but  the  petrels 
of  disaster,  and  I  have  the  distinction  of  having  been  one  of  these 
few,  were  descried  as  militarists.  With  the  utmost  complacency  the 
world  drifted  on,  forgot  its  duties  toward  the  neighbor,  grabbed  for 
markets  and  grew  callous  of  all  but  the  ego.  The  result  was  the 
costliest  of  wars  and  the  debacle  of  a  social  system  on  which  better 
men  than  ourselves  had  labored.  Revolution  instead  of  evolution 
became  the  watchword.  It  was  deemed  necessary  to  pull  down  every- 
thing in  order  that  the  fantastic  structure  of  the  idealist  might  be 
raised. 

Whether  or  no  mankind  is  to  derive  benefit  from  this  excursion 
into  Utopia  remains  to  be  seen.  So  long  as  municipal  law  in  the  well- 
administered  state  is  the  result,  rather  than  the  cause,  of  good  conduct 
by  the  majority  of  citizens,  so  long  will  sound  international  relations 
be  the  effect  of  good  conduct  by  the  majority  of  states.  And  that 
majority,  naturally,  includes  the  leading  elements  in  both  categories. 
A  rapacious  caste  will  influence  legislation  for  the  purpose  of  further- 
ing its  own  interests ;  the  rapacious  government  and  state  will  shape 
international  relations,  and  direct  their  course,  agreeable  to  its  own 
objectives.     Glib   assurances   will   not   do — nor   should   they   longer 


XX  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

suffice.  While  the  axiom,  the  end  justifies  the  means,  has  fallen 
somewhat  into  disfavor  and  has  been  disavowed  by  the  idealists  at 
least,  the  fact  is  that  the  Great  War  was  really  a  procession  of  such 
cases — a  sad  procession,  to  be  sure,  but  a  reality  for  all  that.  All 
the  hypocritical  protests  that  could  be  uttered  in  a  thousand  years 
will  not  efface  the  sorry  fact  that  the  Great  War  was  between  two 
camps,  the  test  to  what  extent  Might  could  be  made  Right.  But 
while  arms  settled  the  issue  it  was  diplomacy  that  made  the  issue. 

In  this  connection  I  deem  it  proper  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  I  had  a  great  deal  of  experience  with  diplomatic  circles  and 
diplomacy  in  Europe.  This  experience  in  fact  is  my  justification  for 
treating  this  subject  and  documentation  here  thereof  has  the  purpose 
of  letting  the  reader  see  diplomacy  at  close  range.  In  the  interest 
of  peace  I  caused  the  removal  from  his  post  of  one  diplomatist,  and 
for  a  little  time  took  over  much  of  the  affairs  of  an  embassy,  to  whose 
chief  I  later  brought  the  sad  news  that  in  the  morning  he  would  get 
his  passports.  At  the  man's  request  I  asked  the  foreign  office  in  question 
that  the  severance  of  diplomatic  relations  be  postponed  for  a  few 
days.  This  was  done  and  a  little  later  it  became  my  duty  to  argue 
for  a  continuation  of  relations  so  that  there  might  be  left  standing 
a  bridge  over  which  relations  with  another  power  might  be  resumed. 

Diplomacy  had  failed  woefully.  In  desperation  and  despair,  high 
government  officials  had  to  turn  to  a  mere  scribe,  a  foreign  corre- 
spondent, for  counsel  and  assistance.  Diplomatists  had  arrived  at  a 
point  where  they  no  longer  trusted  one  another.  Both  sides  seemed 
willing  to  stay  out  of  the  Great  War,  yet  neither  had  enough  confi- 
dence in  the  other  to  be  frank  in  the  least  degree.  So  long  had  these 
\  men  lied  to  one  another  and  so  many  deceptions  had  been  practiced 
that  an  outjsider  had  to  be  called  in  to  interpret  the  Machiavellian 
assurances  that  had  been  or  were  being  given.  In  other  words,  di- 
plomacy stood  unmasked  even  before  those  who  engaged  in  it.  Greek 
had  met  Greek. 

The  occurrence  was  tragic  in  the  extreme.  It  caused  the  writer 
to  double  his  interest  in  diplomacy  and  its  questionable  practices, 
of  which  by  that  time  he  had  seen  enough  already.  His  present 
effort  is  the  result  of  the  observations  and  investigations  made  by 
him  before  and  after  the  incident  referred  to. 

Those  who  may  conclude  that  American  diplomacy  and  diplo- 
matists get  a  disproportionate  share  of  attention  here  are  reminded 
that  I  am  writing  for  the  American  public,  that,  as  American  news- 
paper correspondent,  I,  naturally,  occupied  myself  more  with  American 
diplomacy  than  with  any  other,  and  that,  finally,  the  role  of  the  United 


PREFACE  XXI 

States  came  to  be  a  most  exceptional  one  in  Central  Europe,  the  locale 
of  my  work.  There  is  another  reason  why  I  should  select  the  United 
States  diplomatic  service  for  purposes  of  illustrating  what  the  pitfalls 
of  diplomacy  may  be.  It  is  not  necessary  to  have  the  foreign  affairs 
of  a  country  in  the  hands  of  designing  rascals  to  get  that  country  into 
trouble.  The  amateur  diplomatist — the  yokel  in  foreign  affairs  and 
relations — can  do  that  also.  He  can  create  situations  by  his  own 
effort,  and,  what  is  far  worse,  he  serves  so  much  the  better  the  sinister 
purposes  of  a  man  or  group  with  a  mission,  a  Woodrow  Wilson,  for 
instance. 

Next  to  nothing  is  so  far  known  in  regard  to  United  States  diplomacy 
in  Central  Europe.  The  American  public,  like  its  Congress,  knows  that 
there  was  trouble  somewhere,  and  Mr.  Wilson  has  steadfastly  refused 
to  take  either  into  his  confidence.  Mr.  Lansing  also  has  said  little,  know- 
ing that  no  credit  of  any  sort  attaches  to  our  participation  in  the  Great 
War.  In  fact  nobody  hath  spoken,  and  nobody  will  speak.*  To  me  it 
seems  that  my  co-citizens  deserve  better.  I  will  afford  them  the  means 
toward  that  end,  and  it  is  possible  that  I,  blazing  here  a  trail,  may  induce 
others  to  be  heard  from,  because,  I  take  it,  and  what  is  more,  I  know,  that 
our  diplomacy  at  other  capitals  was  not  one  iota  better.  I  have  written 
here  merely  of  the  things  I  came  in  touch  with.  Were  I  to  put  down 
even  a  part  of  what  I  heard  five  such  volumes  would  be  needed  to  perpetuate 
the  antics  of  men  who,  according  to  their  own  books,  were  little  short  of 
being  omnipotent,  omniscient  and  omnipresent — in  the  eyes  of  the  penny- 
a-liners  who  wrote  these  books,  if  not  by  admission  of  His  Excellency 
himself. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  future  historian  will  not  give  too  much 
heed  to  the  drivel  one  finds  in  the  books  of  diplomatist-authors.  I  at 
least  have  found  these  books  remarkably  unreliable  on  the  part  played 
by  the  author.  It  would  seem  that  these  literary  productions  are  on 
a  par  with  the  "blue  books"  published  by  governments  for  the  edi- 
fication of  the  public  and  their  own  amusement,  as  in  some  cases  I 
will  show.  And  here  it  may  be  noted  that  so  far  the  British  and 
French  diplomatists  on  foreign  post  just  before  the  outbreak  of  war 
have  not  been  heard  from.     In   fact,  they  will  not  be  heard  from. 


*  ".  .  .  Yet  the  fact  that  the  Senate  must  ratify  all  agreements  is  likely  to  make  us  believe 
that  we  really  have  popular  control  of  foreign  policy,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  less  is  known 
about  American  diplomacy  before  and  during  the  war  than  about  the  exchanges  leading  to  and 
accompanying  the  belligerency  of  any  of  the  other  Allies.  .  .  .  What  actually  did  Wilson, 
Lloyd  George,  Clemenceau  and  Orlando  say  to  each  other  in  that  stuffy  room  which  housed  the 
Council  of  Four?  These  are  things  that  we  must  know  before  even  provisional  estimates  can  be 
formed  of  President  Wilson's  policy  before  and  during  the  war;  and,  in  spite  of  our  machinery 
for  popular  control  of  diplomacy,  Americans  know  rather  less  of  their  own  recent  h.istory  than  of 
European  history.  It  is  a  nice  ethical  question,  finally,  as  to  whether  the  citizens  of  a  democracy 
should  not  be  told  these  matters  by  official  publications  instead  of  personal  memoirs." — lyindsay 
Rogers,   The  Review,  Feb.  28,  1930. 


XXII  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

because  their  government  and  Foreign  Office  would  never  let  them. 
Thus  it  will  seem  that  only  the  diplomatists  of  the  United  States,  and 
of  the  countries  defeated  by  the  Allies,  engage  in  writing  memoirs 
that  are  personal  and  partial,  but  which  for  all  that  aspire  to  being 
accepted  as  "truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth."  Study  of  these  books 
will  lead  to  no  other  conclusion  than  that  they  are  at  best  a  record  of 
backstairs  gossip  perpetuated  by  the  mighty  master  of  the  house — a 
rather  ludicrous  situation,  to  be  sure.  Yet  it  is  from  books  of  this 
sort  that  the  public  of  the  United  States  has  taken  the  scant  knowledge 
— or  what  it  mistakes  for  knowledge — it  has  of  the  Great  War.  In  this 
regard  it  is  not  unique,  of  course,  since  the  United  States  Senate  was 
obliged  to  gather  its  information  concerning  the  sessions  in  Paris 
from  the  Canadian,  South  African  and  Australian  press.  That  Mr. 
Wilson  wanted  to  guarantee  for  ever  and  aye  the  status  quo  as  now 
existing  in  the  Balkan  was  learned  by  our  Senate  not  from  Mr.  Wilson 
or  American  newspapers  but  from  the  Rumanian  and  Serbian  press. 

Since  from  a  labor  of  this  isort  purpose  cannot  be  dissociated,  I 
wish  to  say  that  I  have  the  betterment  of  the  methods  of  international 
relations  at  heart.  Above  all,  I  would  contribute  something  toward 
the  improvement  of  which  the  diplomatic  service  of  the  United  States 
stands  in  the  sorest  need. 

I  have  certain  recommendations  to  make,  but  before  I  speak  of 
them  it  becomes  necessary  to  picture  diplomacy  as  it  was  and  still  is, 
and  how  it  brought  on  the  Great  War. 

In  conclusion  I  wish  to  state  that  no  single  individual  is  in 
position  to  know  it  all.  I  confine  myself  here  strictly  to  the  sphere 
in  which  I  moved  and  to  the  facts  with  which  I  became  familiar. 

New  York,  May  1,  1919.  S. 


I 


LIST  OF  CHAPTERS  AND  SUB-DIVISIONS 


Page 

Introduction    XI 

Preface XVII 

List  of  Chapters  and  Sub-Divisions  XXIII 

I.     WAR  AND  DIPLOMACY 1 

The  Varying  Nature  of  Racial  Fitness 2 

The  Causes  of  War  in  Mesopotamia 4 

The  Oldest  Treaty  of  Record 6 

Two  Early  Types  of  Arriviste 8 

Expansion  in  Imperial  Rome 9 

II.     DIPLOMATISTS  AND  THEIR  CRAFT 12 

Diplomatic  Privilege  of  Ancient  Origin 13 

Diplomatists  Receive  Scant  Salaries 15 

Diplomacy  As  Seen  ad  hominem 17 

The  European  Professional  Diplomatist 19 

On  the  MentaUty  of  the  Diplomatist 21 

A  Hypothetical  Demonstration  of  Diplomacy 24 

III.  XHEjmEMLALLJLAIiCS 27 

The  Three  Emperors'  League  Superseded 29 

Purpose  of  Franco- Russian  Alliance 31 

Russia  and  Germany  Continue  Friends 33 

Europe's  Three  Political  Camps 35 

The  Triple  Entente  Puts  in  Appearance 36 

IV.  XWT?  T-PTPIrE  FiNTFNTK 39 

The  Case  of  the  Two-Power  Standard 41 

A  Race  Between  Jingo  and  Chauvinist 43 

The  Anti-German  Policy  of  Edward  VII 45 

Diplomacy  in  Its  Heyday 47 

A  General  Maneuvering  for  Position 49 

Preparedness  for  War  Gets  New  Start 51 

—The  Position  of  Austria-Hungary 53 

The  Profits  of  Tariff  Discrimination 55 

V.    TUFi  GREAT  DKRACT.K 57 

A  Question  of  Royal  Respectability 58 

The  Diplomatic  Mines  Are   Sprung 60 

The  Terms  of  the  Entente  Cordiale 63 

The  Attitude  of  Prince  Lichnowski 65 


XXlll 


XXIV  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

PaC« 

V.     THE  GREAT  DEBACLE  (Continued) 

The  Conduct  of  a  Mad  Militarist 70 

A  Diplomatic  jeu  de  grimasse 72 

A  Bull  in  a  Political  China  Shop 75 

The   Government  "Official"   as   Statesman 77 

What  the   German   Government   Overlooked 79 

A   Piece   of   Diplomatic   Hypocrisy 82 

VI.     WHAT   WILL   AMERICA    DO? 85 

The  "Orders  in  Council"  Become  Supreme 87 

International   Law   Goes   Into   Discard 90 

When    Diplomacy    Shirks    Problems 92 

The  Position  of  Neutral  Holland, 93 

The  Attitude  of  an  American  Diplomatist 95 

Views  of  an  Irate   Diplomatic   Censor 98 

The  Censor  Assists  Entente  Diplomacy 100 

Preparing  American  Public  Opinion 103 

The  Case  of  Cardinal  Mercier 105 

Voice  of  Press  Is  Voice  of  People 107 

VIL     DIPLOMACY  IN   TURKEY 110 

The  Dardanelles  in  Early  Diplomacy 112 

Entente    Diplomacy    When    Handicapped 115 

A  Balkan  Problem  in  the  Making 117 

An  American  Ambassador  Is  Heard  From 119 

When  and  Why  German  Diplomacy  Won 122 

Diplomatic  Sauce  for  Goose  and  Gander 124 

A  Diplomatist  in  a  Quandary 126 

Diplomatic   Omnipotence   at   Close    Range 128 

The  Foibles  of  a  Diplomatic  Agent. 132 

Beyond  the  Bounds  of  Diplomatic  Propriety 135 

VIII.     MACHIAVELISM    A  OUTRANGE 137 

A   Militaro-Diplomatic   Move   Foiled 138 

Strange   Diplomatic   Bed-Fellows 141 

Russia's   Dream   a   Diplomatic   "Desire" 143 

Where  Clarification  Was  Needed 146 

Clarification  Is  No  Longer  Needed 149 

Consequences  of  the  Dardanelles  Fiasco 151 

IX.     BULGARIA  VERSUS  SERBIA 154 

The  Roots  of  "Balkan"  Diplomacy 156 

Sazonoff 's  Policy  Toward  Bulgaria 159 

Bulgaria's  Independence  Displeased  Czar 162 

Bucharest   Treaty  a    Mare's   Nest 164 

How  Bulgarian  Officers  Viewed  It 166 

Entente  Diplomacy  at  Sofia  Bestirs  Itself 163 

Dr.  Radoslavoff's  Diplomatic  Notions 170 

Question  of  Guarantee  Leads  to  Deadlock 172 


LIST  OF  CHAPTERS  AND  SUB-DIVISIONS         XXV 

Pa«e 

X.     SOME  CASES  OF  DIPLOMANIA I77 

Sofia    Entente    Diplomatists    Depart I79 

A  Clash  Between  "Minister"  and  Consul  General 182 

Mr.  Einstein  a  Most  Zealous  Guardian 184 

The  Pseudo-Minister  Had  a  Free  Hand 188 

Pre-Conceived  Views  of  a  Diplomatist 190 

A  Diplomatist  of  Ingrown  Intellect I93 

Publicity  is  Used  as  a  Corrective 196 

XL     DIPLOMACY    IN    RUMANIA 199 

Diplomatic  Constellation  at  Bucharest 200 

Back  of  the  Coulisses  Diplomatiques  • 203 

How  Senator  Marghiloman  Saw  It 205 

A  Neutrality  of  Several  Parts 209 

The  Value  of  the  "Information  Service" 211 

A  Diplomatic  Deal  In  Wheat. 215 

Political  Business  in  Plain  Language 219 

Some   Matters   Incident  to   Warfare 221 

Bratianu  Makes  a  Diplomatic  Deal 223 

XII.     DIPLOMACY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION 227 

The  Fruit  of  Diplomacy  Begins  to  Ripen 228 

Allied    Diplomacy    Is    Editor-in-Chief 230 

When  the  American  Press  Was  Less  Partial 233 

The  British  Censors  Were  a  Touchy  Lot 235 

Contradicting  an  English  Balkan  "Expert" 238 

In  Press  Diplomacy  First  Version  Counts 240 

Mr.  Lansing  Thought  It  More  Courteous 242 

British   Censorship   Diplomacy  Ubiquitous 245 

Censorship  Diplomacy  in  Bulgaria 248 

Mr.  Gerard  Also  Promotes  Public  Opinion 250 

What  the  Wilhelmstrasse  Thought  of  It 256 

XIII.     THE  BERLIN  VIEWPOINT 262 

Diplomacy  of  the  Palazzo  Farnese 264 

The   Sacred   Egotism   of   Diplomacy 266 

The  Pan-German's  Dream  of  Empire 268 

German   Realpolitik  vs.   British   Idealpolitik 270 

—  German  Diplomacy  as  Seen  From  Within 272 

International  Law  a  Mere  Rule  of  Conduct 274 

The  Earlier  View  of  the  American  Government 276 

The   World  from  Now  On  "Privy-Counselled" 278 

Diplomacy  and  the  Question  of  Food 281 

Fulcrum  of  a   Diplomatic   See-Saw 284 

What  Machiavel  Would  Have  Done 286 

A  Diplomatic  Splitting  of  Hairs 288 

The  Handicaps  of  German   Diplomacy 290 

In  Diplomacy  Might  Is  Right 293 


XXVI  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Pace 

XIV.    THE  VIENNA  VIEWPOINT 296 

Diplomacy   versus    National   Fact 297 

In  a  Diplomatic  cul-de-sac   300 

Austro-Himgarian  Diplomacy   Less  Handicapped 302 

Diplomacy  Reduced  to  Plain  Business 304 

Tisza's  View  of  the  Situation  in  1916 307 

Count  Tisza  Doubted  Mr.  Wilson's  Integrity 309 

Vienna  Not  Fond  of  Submarine  Warfare 312 

Diplomacy   of   the   Barbed- Wire    Brand 314 

State   Department   Policy   Not   Consistent 317 

The  Cause  of  Future  Political  Moves 319 

The  Ever- Wakeful  British  and  French  Censors 321 

An  Attempt  to  Believe  the  Incredible 324 

First  of  Two  Major  Political  Moves 326 

XV.     DIPLOMACY  AT  CROSS  PURPOSES 331 

An   Infested   Diplomatic   Woodpile 332 

Count  Czernin  Before  a  Great  Problem 335 

An  American  Ambassador  and  "Free  Press" 342 

Strained  Personal  Diplomatic  Relations 345 

Washington  Clears  Decks  for  Action 349 

A  Diplomatist  in  Sore  Predicament 352 

The  Aftermath  of  a  Diplomatic  Tea 355 

Diplomatic   Negotiations  Under  Difficulties 358 

Diplomatists  and  Plain  Citizen 360 

XVI.     SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 364 

Products  of  the  Diplomatic  Laboratory 366 

As  to  Open  Covenants  and  Open  Diplomacy 371 

A  Better  Base  for  International  Relations 374 

The  Field  of  the  Interparliamentary  Union 379 

Why  "Diplomacy"  Should  Get  Its  Passport 381 

The  Fourteen  Points  and  What  Became  of  Them 383 

APPENDIX    389 

A.  Treaty  of  Alliance  of  1279  B.  C 389 

B.  The   Battle   of   Kadesh 391 

C.  "League  of  Peace"  of  1518-19  A.  D. 394 

D.  The  Entento-Italian  Agreement  of  1915 395 

E.  Censorship  Regulations  of  Bulgaria,  1915 397 

F.  Societe  Anonyme  et  S.  E.  le  Cardmal  Mercier 400 

G.  "The   Pitfalls   of  Diplomacy" 404 

INDEX  OF  PERSONNEL  409 

LIST  OF  DOCUMENTS  QUOTED  419 


¥ 


The  Craft  Sinister 


WAR  AND  DIPLOMACY 

THE  causes  of  war  advanced  by  the  historian  seem  varied  enough. 
Close  and  impartial  scrutiny,  however,  discloses  that  the  prime 
cause  of  war  has  been  real  or  fancied  necessity — economic  pres- 
sure in  some  instance,  political  factors  in  others. 

It  is  no  simple  operation  to  divide  in  this  instance  the  real  from  the 
fancied.  Economic  pressure  becomes  generally  a  political  factor;  it  is 
that  in  all  cases  when  the  ultima  ratio — war — is  resorted  to.  When  it  is 
considered  that  even  the  material  needs  of  a  state  are  not  always  a  matter 
of  actual  want,  but  may  be  no  more  than  what  is  usually  understood  by 
the  term :  Expansion — the  enlargement  at  the  expense  of  others,  of  domain, 
markets  or  political  influence,  the  task  of  delimitation  appears  in  its  proper 
proportions.  We  do  not  deal  here  with  a  simple  form  of  taking.  Some 
other  party  must  lose  before  the  taking  can  occur.  The  claims  of  a  popu- 
lation living  under  intolerable  conditions  due  to  overcrowding  seem  valid 
enough  so  long  as  they  are  viewed  by  themselves.  They  lose,  however, 
much  of  their  weight  when  contrasted  to  the  position  of  the  people  at 
whose  expense  more  room  is  to  be  found  for  the  claimant.  The  territory 
in  question  may  not  be  needed  by  the  second  party,  but  the  fact  is  that  the 
latter  thinks  that  the  space  will  be  needed  before  long  for  its  own  increase 
in  population. 

Breaking  away  from  the  purely  biological  aspect  of  the  case,  we 
come  to  the  matter  of  wealth.  Territory  not  actually  occupied  or  made 
use  of  is  wealth,  of  course.  Of  this  each  nation  would  retain  as  much  as 
possible.  To  retain  it,  nations  in  all  ages  have  taken  recourse  to  arms, 
either  in  a  preventive  manner,  by  being  militarily  prepared,  or  by  entering 
upon  war. 

Whatever  aspect  of  decency  there  attaches  to  military  operations  is 
found  in  the  defense  of  such  a  right,  so  that,  generally  speaking,  defensive 
wars  are  the  only  ones  which  need  appeal  to  our  imagination.  It  follows 
that  where  there  is  defense  there  must  be  aggression,  and  it  is  plain,  then, 
that  the  aggressor  is  in  the  wrong. 

But  the  aggressor  is  not  in  the  wrong  from  his  own  point  of  view,  and 
the  instances  are  not  few  in  which  the  historian  and  philosopher  has  sided 


2  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

with  him.  It  is,  for  example,  the  universal  acceptance  that  the  subjuga- 
tion, and  ^ven  the  total  elimination,  of  a  people  considered  barbarous  is 
permissible,  to  say  the  least.  Anciently  such  was  the  general  practice 
unblushingly  adhered  to  by  all.  But  there  are  even  more  recent  examples 
of  this.  iWe  have  but  to  remind  ourselves  of  the  fate  of  the  American 
Indian,  the  Aztecs  and  the  Peruvians  to  see  how  little  headway  civilization 
has  really  made.  Antiquity,  indeed,  does  not  show  us  a  single  case  in 
which  races  and  nations  were  treated  so  ruthlessly  or  were  so  completely 
effaced.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Jews  suffered  very  hard  treatment 
at  the  hands  of  the  Egyptians,  Assyrians,  Babylonians,  Persians,  Romans 
and  others.  For  all  that  the  race  survived,  and  mankind  has  lost  nothing 
thereby. 

The  fate  of  nations  is,  as  that  of  individuals,  a  question  of  survival 
of  the  fittest.  The  fact  that  the  x\ztec  and  Inca  civilizations  disappeared 
is  not  entirely  a  matter  of  Spanish  cruelty.  To  be  sure,  both  of  them 
would  have  survived,  at  least  in  part,  had  they  first  come  in  contact  with 
as  enlightened  a  system  of  colonization  as  the  modern  British.  Neverthe- 
less, the  Aztec  and  Inca  civilizations  contained  within  themselves  the 
elements  of  weakness  that  was  to  be  their  doom.  The  haughty  and  cruel 
government  of  the  Montezumas  made  it  possible  for  Hernando  Cortez  to 
find  within  Mexico  the  allies  he  needed  to  destroy  the  despotism  of  the 
Aztec  government,  and  in  Peru  another  conquistador,  Francisco  Pizarro, 
found  a  highly  centralized  government  in  a  socialistically  administered 
state,  the  collapse  of  which  left  the  people  without  leadership  and  made 
the  handful  of  Spaniards  supreme. 

In  both  instances  the  less  fitted  succumbed  to  the  better  fitted.  The 
fate  of  the  North  American  Indian  is  very  similar.  In  this  case  the 
subject  race  was  unable  even  to  grasp  what  little  opportunity  there  was 
given  it.  Instead  of  reconciling  itself  to  the  new  state  of  things,  the 
Indian  preferred  to  pass  into  oblivion  over  the  route  of  idleness  and  free 
government  rations  on  a  Reservation.  Only  the  confirmed  sentimentalist 
would  shed  tears  on  behalf  of  the  "poor"  Indian. 

The  Varying  Nature  of  Fitness 

Though  some  would  have  it  otherwise,  the  fact  is  that  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  is  the  main  trait  in  the  history  of  mankind.  That  fitness, 
however,  has  not  been  always  of  the  same  class  and  degree.  In  some 
cases  it  has  been  entirely  physical,  in  others  superiority  of  intellect  has  been 
the  means  of  survival,  as  witness  the  case  of  the  Old  Greeks  and  the  Jews. 
There  are  cases  even  in  which  the  mere  superiority  of  numbers  counted,  as 
was  true  especially  of  the  migratory  hordes  that  swept  from  Asia  into 


THE  VARYING  NATURE  OF  FITNESS  3 

Europe  and  dispersed  strong  governments  and  well-organized  peoples  as 
if  they  had  been  so  much  chaff  before  the  wind.  That  the  Tartaric  and 
Mongolian  elements  in  Europe  are  not  more  prominent  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  superiority  in  numbers  could  not  prevail  in  the  end.  The  people 
through  whose  territories  these  nomad  armies  spread  had  brains  in  addi- 
tion to  brawn,  and  so  it  came  that  before  long  there  was  little  left  of  the 
invaders.  The  Finns  moved  into  uncontested  districts  and  the  Huns  were 
assimilated  by  a  civilization.  With  the  adoption  of  the  arts  and  practices  of 
the  Germanic  peoples,  among  whorh  they  settled,  the  race  of  Attila  armed 
itself  against  ejection.  The  result  has  been  that  it  has  survived  into  our 
own  days  and  is  still  one  of  the  most  virile  peoples  in  Europe. 

It  is  not  within  the  range  of  the  subject  discussed  here  to  give  further 
examples  of  this  sort.  History  is  almost  entirely  made  up  of  similar  in- 
stances. The  point  that  is  to  be  illustrated  here  is  of  what  nature  the 
necessities  leading  to  war  may  be,  and  what  results  they  have  generally 
led  to.  We  find  on  the  one  hand  that  a  few  adventurers  bent  upon  the 
accumulation  of  riches  have  destroyed  great  organized  states,  while  on  the 
other  whole  racial  groups  went  out  in  search  of  the  promised  land,  found 
it,  and  then  either  perished  or  prospered. 

The  war  records  of  antiquity  are  entirely  too  meager  and  incomplete 
to  permit  the  drawing  of  a  line  of  demarkation  between  the  actual  and 
specific  causes  of,  and  the  pretexts  for,  war.  What  little  authentic  data 
there  has  come  to  us  consists  in  the  main  of  the  self -laudatory  records  left 
by  rulers  who  had  been  successful  on  the  battlefield,  a  condition  which 
would  easily  cause  the  impression,  as  it  has  done,  that  the  wars  of  the 
Ancients  were  nearly  always  personal  exploits  of  a  sportive  character.  A 
closer  study  of  the  subject,  however,  shows  that  this  is  a  fallacy  in  many 
cases.  Real  and  fancied  necessity  was  even  then  the  moving  factor.  Pre- 
texts of  one  sort  or  another  were  already  resorted  to,  showing  that  then, 
as  now,  there  was  a  sort  of  world  public  opinion  that  had  to  be  appeased 
when  it  was  not  actually  appealed  to. 

In  the  valley  of  the  Two  Rivers,  now  known  as  Mesopotamia,  the 
population  was  already  dense  at  the  very  dawn  of  history.  For  the 
purpose  of  increasing  the  arable  area  the  water  of  the  Tigris  and 
•  Euphrates  had  been  led  into  thousands  of  irrigation  canals,  a  labor  which 
in  itself  is  the  best  evidence  that  the  Chaldeans  and  Sumerians  were  meet- 
ing the  demand  for  more  room  made  by  the  growing  population  in  a  manner 
which  could  not  offend  the  neighbor,  except,  possibly,  in  so  far  that  the 
neighbor  grew  alarmed  at  the  increase  in  population  itself  or  became  envious 
of  the  riches  of  these  states. 

It  would  seem  that  after  a  while  the  possibilities  of  development  in 
the  central  and  northern  reaches  of  the  two  rivers  were  exhausted,  and 


4  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

that  the  Chaldeans  had  to  look  for  more  room  elsewhere.  Bounded  in  the 
West  by  great  deserts,  similarly  handicapped  in  the  East,  the  Chaldeans 
endeavored  to  find  room  in  the  North  and  South.  The  Eastern  Taurus, 
however,  was  inhabited  by  mountaineers,  probably  the  ancestors  of  the 
Armenians,  and  no  headway  could  be  made  in  that  direction. 

The  result  was  that  the  Chaldeans  turned  toward  the  South,  and  be- 
fore long  became  not  only  the  masters,  but  also  the  sole  inhabitants  of  what 
had  been  the  state  of  Sumeria.  When  the  country  was  taken  much  of 
the  population  was  put  to  the  sword  and  the  remainder  carried  into  captivity. 

The  same  people,  later  known  as  Assyrians,  repeated  this  practice  else- 
where, as  did  the  Babylonians,  their  direct  descendants.  The  Medes  and 
Persians  finally  put  an  end  to  the  whole  state  structure  in  Mesopotamia,  but 
did  not  enjoy  their  empire  for  long.  Greek  and  Roman  came  and  put  a 
period  to  Persia  and  her  empire,  and  within  a  very  short  time,  so  far  the 
life  of  nations  goes,  the  new  overlords  of  Southwest  Asia  themselves  went 
into  oblivion,  to  be  succeeded  by  the  Arabs,  cousins  of  the  Chaldeans,  As- 
syrians and  Babylonians.  The  same  race  was  again  in  possession  of  the 
Two  Rivers  country.  The  arteries  of  life,  however,  the  great  irrigation 
canals,  had  dried  up  and  little  could  now  be  done  with  a  country  into  which 
Paradise  had  been  laid  by  the  Ancients. 

We  have  in  this  instance  what  may  be  called  an  entire  cycle  of  national 
life,  extending  well  over  seven  thousand  years,  if  we  make  allowance  for 
the  time  required  to  bring  Chaldea  into  the  relatively  high  state  of  develop- 
ment it  had  when  the  curtain  lifts  on  it. 

The  Causes  of  War  in  Mesopotamia 

The  tendency  to  expand  in  numbers,  and  possibly  in  commerce,  as 
shown  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  Two  Rivers  country,  is  indeed  a  most 
sinister  one.  It  led  to  the  most  cruel  wars  of  conquest  we  have  record  of. 
Military  operations  were,  seemingly,  undertaken  on  slightest  provocation 
and  no  regard  whatever  was  shown  for  the  rights  of  the  state  neighbor. 
The  absence  of  such  a  thing  as  international  law  and  its  sanctioning  matrix, 
a  strong  public  opinion,  tended  to  make  these  wars  as  ruthless  as  they  could 
be.  That  such  was  the  case  is  shown  by  the  tablets  and  steles  of  the  time, 
on  which  rulers  boast  with  great  satisfaction  of  the  cruelties  they  commit- 
ted. From  the  defeated  enemy  ruler  was  generally  taken  "the  light  of  his 
eyes,  the  speech  from  his  mouth,  and  the  sound  from  his  ears,"  after 
which  he  might  suffer  "the  pain  of  the  boat,"  the  most  disgusting  method 
of  execution  ever  devised  by  the  brain  of  man.  To  flay  the  captive  alive 
was  nothing  unusual  in  those  days ;  the  morale  of  populations  and  besieged 
garrisons  was  generally  shaken  by  impaling  within  view  from  the  city  walls 


THE  CAUSES  OF  WAR  IN  MESOPOTAMIA       5 

the  hapless  creature  from  whom  fate  had  withheld  the  swifter  end  that 
came  when  the  populace  was  put  to  the  sword  by  the  conqueror.  When 
the  city  had  finally  been  sacked  and  razed,  the  comely  females,  and  now 
and  then,  the  young  men,  were  carried  into  slavery. 

Ancient  history  is  largely  compiled  from  such  records,  because  the 
chronicles  of  kinder  import  are  exceedingly  scarce.  Small  wonder  then 
that  the  history  of  Southwest  Asia  is  one  long  account  of  cruelty  in  war 
and  deceit  in  international  relations,  of  conquest  today  and  subjugation 
tomorrow. 

But  we  must  guard  against  thinking  ourselves  entirely  in  a  different 
class.  As  pointed  out,  the  records  of  the  better  side  of  life  in  the  Two 
Rivers  country  are  scant.  We  must  not  forget  that  the  blatant  autobiog- 
raphies of  the  ancient  conquistador es  are,  at  their  very  best,  most  frag- 
mentary and  extend  over  a  period  of  almost  four  thousand  years.  To 
condemn  a  whole  civilization  on  such  evidence  would  be  unfair.  It  must 
be  borne  in  mind  also  that  the  rulers  of  those  days  and  parts  were  absolute 
despots,  amenable  only  to  the  dagger  of  the  assassin  and  the  tender  mercies 
of  another  ruler.  Apparent  also  is  that  much  of  the  murder  that  was 
done,  on  ruler  and  people  alike,  was  in  the  nature  of  reprisal.  Cruelty  was 
met  with  increased  cruelty,  and  crime  was  visited  with  retribution  in  end- 
less repetition,  until  it  was  looked  upon  as  a  perfectly  legitimate  incident 
to  war. 

Agriculture,  industry  and  commerce  were  too  well  fostered  by  the 
Ancients  in  the  Two  Rivers  country  to  permit  the  snap  judgment  that  all 
of  its  rulers  engaged  in  war  for  the  sole  purpose  of  drowning  their  ennui 
in  bloodshed  and  destruction.  When  a  city  was  razed  and  its  people 
massacred  and  deported,  or  when  a  whole  country  was  laid  waste  and  its 
population  put  to  the  sword  or  carried  into  captivity,  some  sort  of  necessity 
was  behind  the  undertaking.  In  some  cases  more  room  was  needed,  in 
others  a  commercial  rival  was  to  be  eliminated,  and  when  we  read  in  the 
chronicles  of  old  that  this  or  that  king  left  his  country  greater  than  he  had 
found  it  we  may  be  sure  that  he  left  it  more  prosperous  and  that  the  wars 
he  waged  had  that  for  an  objective. 

Ancient  Egypt  is  a  good  example  of  this.  Though  a  contemporary  of 
the  states  in  Mesopotamia,  its  military  history  is  on  the  whole  a  very  gentle 
tale.  The  Pharaohs  were  never  a  cruel  lot.  Expansion  was  attempted  in 
the  direction  of  Ethiopia  and  Judea,  but  nothing  of  any  account  ever  came  of 
this.  Small  territories  were  occupied  for  a  time,  to  be  ultimately  abandoned. 
In  many  respects  Old  Egypt  was  the  Holland  of  her  days,  I  should  say, 
without  wishing  to  infer  that  dykes  and  annual  inundations  must  of  neces- 
sity influence  all  peoples  alike.  The  Egypt  of  the  Pharaohs  was  separatistic. 
Her  borders  were  rather  secure  on  the  whole.     To  the  East  and  West  of 


6  THB  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  valley  the  desert  formed  natural  means  of  defense.  The  shores  of  the 
Red  Sea  and  Mediterranean  were  easily  guarded,  and  the  Ethiopians  in 
the  South  seem  to  have  been  fairly  decent  neighbors,  a  condition  to  which 
another  desert  and  a  good  line  of  communication  for  the  Egyptians,  the 
navigable  Nile,  must  have  contributed. 

Old  Egypt  was  thus  able  to  nurse  her  civilization  and  from  it  must 
have  come  the  realization  that  wars  of  conquest  are  profitable  only  when 
necessity  for  them  exists.  For  reasons  unknown  to  the  historian  the  popu- 
lation of  the  Nile  valley  does  not  seem  to  have  increased  at  a  great  rate.  It 
is  not  improbable  that  the  increase  was  regulated,  either  purposely  or 
through  the  influence  of  religious  practices  of  a  sexual  character,  the  cult 
of  Isis. 

At  any  rate  the  state  in  the  Nile  valley  lasted,  so  far  as  our  records 
show,  some  five  thousand  years,  and  since  we  must  take  into  consideration 
that  Egypt  enters  history  a  well-organized  state,  bearing  the  imprint  of  a 
slow,  and,  therefore,  long  development  at  the  time  of  her  entrance,  another 
two  thousand  years  may  safely  be  added  to  her  national  life  as  we  know  it. 

The  Oldest  Treaty  of  Record 

It  is  of  interest  to  know  that  the  oldest  treaties  extant  were  made 
between  Egyptian  kings  and  rulers  in  Southwest  Asia,  Asia  Minor  included. 
Of  one  of  them  the  entire  text  is  known.  Rameses  II,  Pharaoh,  and 
Kheta-sar,  King  of  the  Hittites,  are  the  high  contracting  parties.  The 
treaties  then  in  force,  a  defensive  alliance,  prohibition  of  change  of  al- 
( November  28,  1279  B.  C),  and  provides  for  the  reaffirmation  of  other 
treaties  then  i  nforce,  a  defensive  alliance,  prohibition  of  change  of  al- 
legiance of  the  subjects  of  the  two  rulers,  and  extradition  of  fugitives 
from  justice  with  the  rather  humane  stipulation  that  persons  extradited 
may  not  suffer  cruel  punishments.  The  document  was  evidently  drawn 
up  at  the  Egyptian  court,  with  two  Hittite  ambassadors,  Tarte-sebu  and 
Rames,  representing  King  Kheta-sar. 

The  treaty  throws  a  strong  light  on  international  and  diplomatic  re- 
lations in  those  days,  and,  though  more  than  3,000  years  have  passed  since 
then,  it  cannot  be  said  that  we  have  very  much  improved  upon  its  text, 
and,  what  is  more  important,  its  spirit.     (See  Appendix.) 

Egypt,  indeed,  was  the  leader  of  international  morality  in  her  days, 
and  it  would  seem  that  this  contributed  not  a  little  to  her  downfall.  Sur- 
rounded by  a  world  in  which  brute  force  and  political  deception  was  rule 
and  practice,  she  neglected  her  military  establishment  and  ultimately  fell 
prey  to  the  invader.  When  she  finally  passed  ofif  she  was  in  the  condition 
of  the  octogenarian,  whose  works  and  years  were  ripe  alike.     She  had 


THE  OLDEST  TREATY  OF  RECORD         7 

avoided  and  had  been  spared  such  wars  as  would  have  resulted  in  the  in- 
fusion of  new  blood  into  her  people,  and  when  the  raider  finally  came  she 
was  no  longer  virile  enough  to  assimilate.  Instead  she  was  completely 
assimilated — eradicated  to  such  an  extent  that  the  very  type  of  her  people 
has  disappeared. 

Of  the  state  on  the  Nile  it  must  be  said,  however,  that  a  mini- 
mum of  wars  left  her  a  maximum  of  prosperity,  so  long  as  the  struc- 
ture lasted.  And  with  that  prosperity  she  coupled  a  degree  of  culture  that 
was  really  extraordinary.  It  was  the  matrix  of  Greek  philosophy  and 
science,  nor  is  there  much  ground  for  the  belief  that  the  sages  of  Hellas 
carried  their  own  culture  very  much  beyond  the  confines  of  what  they  had 
imported  from  the  Land  of  Temples  and  Pyramids. 

International  relations  between  Egypt  and  Greece  were  the  closest  and 
at  times  the  best,  despite  the  fact  that  the  Greeks  did  not  always  deal 
honestly  with  the  Egyptians,  did  so  very  rarely,  in  fact.  Greece  in  her 
heyday,  however,  seems  to  have  followed  the  Egyptian  model  of  foreign 
intercourse  and  relations.  It  is  rather  surprising  that  with  the  same  means 
and  with  a  more  favorable  geographical  position,  the  Greeks  did  not  take 
to  a  plan  of  expansion,  empire-building,  which  later  gave  its  stamp  to  Rpme. 

The  wars  undertaken  by  Old  Greece  were  mostly  efforts  to  procure 
colonies  in  the  bona  fide  and  afterward  hold  them.  The  colonies  of 
the  Greeks  were  established  to  give  room  for  the  surplus  population  in 
the  home  country,  to  further  Greek  commerce  and  procure  raw  material. 
To  find  sites  for  the  new  cities,  for  of  such  a  nature  most  of  the  colonies 
were  at  the  beginning,  does  not  seem  to  have  been  very  difficult  at  any  time. 
Trouble  came  when  these  cities  and  the  surrounding  country  began  to 
flourish  and  excited  the  envy  of  rapacious  rulers  and  governments.  First 
it  was  the  Persian,  later  the  Roman  bandits  who  coveted  them  and  in  most 
cases  placed  themselves  in  possession. 

Two  Early  Types  of  Arriviste 

It  is  very  unfortunate  that  Greece's  civilization  finally  fell  prey  to 
the  duplicity  of  her  statesmen,  most  of  whom  were  great  diplomatists  and 
as  such  forever  engaged  in  intrigue,  against  some  neighbor  now,  against 
a  Greek  state  or  colony  then.  Alcibiades  and  Themistocles,  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  Greek  diplomatistis  and  statesmen,  may  be  considered  the  very 
prototype  of  the  modern  intriguant  of  the  diplomatic  service.  They  were 
arrivistes  of  the  worst  type,  suffered  forever  from  hurt  feelings  and  closed 
life  as  traitors  to  their  own  people.  Since  there  were  many  of  this  type 
in  Greece,  not  to  mention  Pausanias,  Hellas  was  doomed.  The  worst 
enemy  of  the  Greek  was  the  Greek,  and  so  it  came  to  pass  that,  urged  by 


8  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  demagogue  and  professional  politician,  the  Hellenes  exhausted  them- 
selves in  internecine  strife  and  passed  under  the  rule  of  their  enemies  first 
and  out  of  existence  a  little  later.  The  very  people  of  modern  Greece  are 
not  Greeks.  They  are  Slavs  and  stand  in  relation  to  the  Hellenes  very 
much  as  the  Fellah  along  the  Nile  stands  to  the  Egyptian. 

With  the  departure  of  Egyptian  and  Greek  came  a  new  era  in  war- 
fare and  international  affairs.  For  want  of  a  better  term  I  will  call  it: 
The  Persian. 

For  a  thousand  years  at  any  rate  warfare  had  had  a  constructive  char- 
acter, that  is  to  say,  after  every  campaign  the  world  seemed  a  little  better 
off  than  it  had  been  before.  The  coming  of  the  Persian  and  Roman 
changed  all  that,  though  the  last  of  the  Roman  emperors,  again — alas,  too 
late — ^tried  hard  to  reap  other  fruits  from  war  than  mere  loot.  I  refer  to 
Augustus,  Trajan  and  Hadrian. 

The  Persian  kings  were  empire-mad,  with  the  result  that  their  wars 
were  entirely  destructive.  To  the  Greeks  the  Persians  were  known  as 
barbarians,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  this  characterization  was  to  the 
point.  The  Persians  had  done  little  enough,  in  civics,  in  their  own  coun- 
try. They  did  less  in  the  conquered  territories.  Loot  was  the  principal 
objective  of  their  military  operations.  Under  their  rule  the  irrigation 
systems  of  Mesopotamia  were  so  neglected  that  the  country  ceased  to 
produce  enough  food  for  the  hapless  remainder  of  the  Babylonian  nation. 
Soon  there  was  little  to  steal  in  Mesopotamia  and  with  that  the  Persians 
moved  further  westward.  It  was  not  development  that  interested  this  fine 
race-brother  of  ours,  but  exploitation  by  the  swiftest  method  then  known — 
the  taking  of  some  rich  city  and  the  levying  of  tribute  thereafter.  It  is 
rather  amusing  that  this  international  highwayman  of  Antiquity  should 
have  given  his  acts  the  purest  of  motives — if  we  are  to  take  his  word  for 
it.  The  plain  fact  is  that  he  appropriated  right  and  left  without  even  so 
much  consideration  for  the  inhabitants  as  is  included  in  a  thought  for  their 
further  productivity.  The  Persian  is  truly  the  conquistador  of  old. 
When  he  finally  subsided  he  left  in  his  trail  a  dozen  Mexicos  and  Perus. 
His  rulers  and  military  leaders  were  the  precursors  of  the  Spanish  ad- 
venturers, with  the  same  wild  craze  for  gold  and  dominion,  with  neither 
of  which  they  knew  how  to  deal  judiciously. 

The  first  imperialist  of  record,  giving  the  noun  the  sense  it  identifies 
today,  was  Rome.  Heretofore  wars  had  been  waged  for  more  room  and 
now  and  then  to  get  rid  of  a  neighbor  whose  prosperity  was  either  a  real 
or  fancied  danger.  The  warring  kings  of  Mesopotamia  deported  whole 
populations  after  laying  waste  their  country,  and  after  the  lust  for  blood 
of  their  armies  had  been  stilled.  'Colonization  was  not  practiced  by  them 
for  the  reason  that  contiguity  of  domains  was  considered  very  desirable, 


TWO  EARLY  TYPES  OF  ARRIVISTE  9 

but  was  out  of  the  question,  since  great  trackless  deserts  lay  between  the 
homeland  and  the  districts  that  could  serve  as  colonies.  It  is  possible  that 
the  Egyptians  were  similarly  hampered,  and,  with  the  means  of  navigation 
still  very  primitive,  the  founding  and  maintenance  of  overseas  colonies 
cannot  have  greatly  appealed  to  the  Egyptians  since  they,  unlike  the 
Greeks,  had  no  string  of  islands  from  the  home  shore  to  colonizable  lands. 
The  colonies  of  the  Greeks  were  merely  the  endeavor  to  find  room  in 
which  to  plow,  work,  build  and  trade.  The  result  of  this  was  that  most  of 
these  colonies  were  autonomous.  For  reasons  unknown  to  us  the  Greeks 
were  not  fond  in  the  main  of  ruling  others.  They  probably  found  ruling 
themselves  strenuous  enough.  Their  history,  in  fact,  leaves  no  doubt  as 
to  this. 

Expansion  in  Imperial  Rome 

With  Rome  it  was  different.  There  was  a  time  when  her  citizens  oc- 
cupied themselves  entirely  with  their  own  affairs  and  problems.  Ambitious 
leaders,  however,  soon  deprived  them  of  this  commendable  habit.  All 
Italy  was  brought  under  Roman  suzerainty,  and,  since  Vappetite  vient  en 
mangeant,  it  was  not  long  before  the  Roman  stay-at-home  began  to  rove 
all  over  the  known  world  in  quest  of  new  colonies.  That  quest,  especially 
under  the  later  consuls  and  emperors,  meant  a  great  deal  of  booty  in  loot 
and  slaves,  and,  above  all,  a  large  income  for  the  state  and  its  ministers 
in  the  form  of  tribute — a  regular  revenue  in  gold  and  silver,  and  often 
enslaved  human  beings.  For  the  rabble  the  colonial  policy  of  imperial 
Rome  meant  free  wheat,  stolen  in  Egypt  and  Cilicia  mostly,  and  free  wine 
from  the  shores  and  islands  of  the  Mediterranean;  free  performances  in 
the  Circus  Maximus.  This  could  not  go  on  forever.  Rome's  population 
grew  poor  mentally  and  so  it  was  that  Rome  became  the  ne  plus  ultra  in 
having  ended  as  a  republic  because  it  was  rich,  and  as  a  monarchy  because 
it  was  poor — an  intellectual  beggar. 

Back  of  the  "splendor  that  was  Rome"  lies  a  disgusting  picture  of 
militarism.  Rome  waxed  fat  on  her  brutality  and  cant.  Might  is  right, 
was  the  maxim  which  the  senators  in  the  Forum  circumvented.  Consul 
and  proconsul  cudgeled  their  brains  night  and  day  how  further  conquest 
could  be  made,  or  how  the  revenues  could  be  increased  to  such  an  extent 
that  even  the  taxes  farmer  could  not  steal  them  all.  Political  leaders  who 
had  fallen  into  disfavor  with  the  capricious  rabble  of  the  city  engaged  in 
tirades  against  "barbaric"  states  to  divert  the  attention  of  the  populace 
from  the  shortcomings  and  crimes  of  the  men  in  the  toga.  Wars  were 
started,  lost  and  won,  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  save  the  reputation  of 
the  rascals  in  high  places. 


10  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Let  Carthage  he  destroyed! 

The  colonies  of  Rome  experienced  better  times  under  the  later  em- 
perors. Monarchs  and  monarchies  have  always  paid  much  attention  to 
what  may  be  termed  a  fixed  state  policy,  in  which  respect  they  are  much 
superior  to  republican  institutions.  Most  of  the  Roman  emperors,  even 
the  worst  of  them,  subscribed  to  the  continuation  of  principles  and  methods 
that  had  been  found  advantageous.  The  colonies  profited  more  by  that 
than  did  the  city  itself.  Roads  were  built  and  shipping  was  placed  on  the 
navigable  rivers.  The  signal  hills  furnished  a  rapid  means  of  communica- 
tion, as  did  a  sort  of  postal  service.  Little  by  little  the  taxes  farmers  were 
curbed  and  a  part  of  the  revenues  collected  was  spent  among  those  who 
contributed  to  them.  In  the  cities  great  public  buildings  were  erected  and 
such  Roman  temple-citadelles  as  Baalbec  assisted  in  making  the  popula- 
tion in  the  provinces  feel  that  they  were  to  some  extent  part  of  that  mighty 
empire  far  away. 

It  is  a  rather  odd  circumstance  that  Republican  Rome  was  liberal  and 
farsighted  only  at  home,  while  Monarchic  Rome  was  liberal  and  progres- 
sive in  the  colonies.  Under  the  republic  the  colonials  were  expected  to 
pray  to  the  gods  of  Rome,  but  refused  to  do  it;  in  the  monarchy  the 
colonials  could  pray  to  whatever  god  they  pleased,  but  preferred  the 
Roman  deities,  worship  of  most  of  whom  had  been  agreeably  modified,  so 
that  a  Syrian,  still  fond  of  Baal,  could  without  injury  to  his  conscience  do 
his  devotions  in  the  Temple  of  Jupiter  Ammon  in  Baalbec,  while  the  Greek 
could  do  likewise  in  the  shrine  to  Venus  on  the  same  fortress  platform. 

Emperors  Augustus  and  Trajan  were  probably  the  greatest  builders 
Rome  had.  Unfortunately,  they  built  in  the  eleventh  hour  of  Rome's 
existence.  The  mortar  in  their  edifices  was  scarcely  dry  and  the  pavement 
on  their  roads  had  barely  settled  when  the  Germanic  barbarians  gave  the 
empire  in  the  West  its  quietus.  The  empire  of  the  Ekst,  Byzantium,  rie- 
inforced  by  nearly  all  that  was  left  of  Greece,  lasted  a  thousand  years 
longer,  and  then  it,  too,  fell  to  pieces.  The  necessities  of  another  race, 
this  time  a  Turanian,  the  Osmanli,  had  of  a  sudden  grown  into  the  pro- 
portions of  an  empire — and  an  empire  the  needs  of  a  small  flock  of  nomads 
were  to  be,  even  though  it  numbered  but  "four  hundred  tents"  when  it 
squatted  down  before  Old  Dorylaeum,  frontier  post  of  the  revolution-torn 
Byzantium. 

At  that  time,  I  am  speaking  of  the  Fifteenth  Century  A.  D.,  diplomacy 
was  already  a  fine  art  in  Europe.  During  the  Dark  Age  it  had  flourished 
greatly,  especially  in  Italy,  France  and  Spain.  The  Neo-Idealism  of  those 
times,  which  ultimately  took  on  the  form  of  a  wild  scramble  to  free  the 
Holy  Places  in  Palestine  from  the  yoke  of  the  Saracene,  was  the  proper 
hotbed  for  political  intrigue.     Italian  diplomatists  especially  were  famous, 


EXPANSION  IN  IMPERIAL  ROME  11 

so  famous,  in  fact,  that  governments  hired  them  as  later  they  hired  Swiss 
Guards.  When  a  certain  Machiavel,  a  century  later,  published  his  fine 
book  on  the  conduct  of  princes  and  governments  he  was  not  by  any  means 
as  original  as  has  been  laid  to  his  credit  by  some,  to  his  discredit  by  others. 
Those  who  condemn  Machiavel  usually  overlook  that  he  was  a  benign  cynic 
who  saw  the  world  in  his  day  as  it  actually  was,  and  as  in  our  days  it 
usually  still  is. 


u 
DIPLOMATISTS  AND  THEIR  CRAFT 

JUST  when  diplomacy  became  the  occupation,  professionally,  of  men 
trained  or  selected  for  the  art  of  negotiation,  as  known  to  govern- 
ments, is  uncertain,  of  course.  The  first  professional  diplomatists 
seem  to  have  served  the  governments  of  Genua  and  Venice,  though  in 
making  that  statement  one  has  to  bear  in  mind  that  it  is  not  always  easy 
to  distinguish  between  the  professional  and  the  occasional,  as  the  case 
may  be  put  here,  seeing  that  amateur  and  dilettante  are  terms  that  can 
hardly  be  applied. 

Long  before  the  diplomatic  representatives  of  these  two  trade  repub- 
lics negotiated  commercial  treaties  and  trade  concessions  in  the  capitals 
of  the  countries  about  the  Mediterranean,  and  said  wicked  things  of  one 
another,  ambassadors  and  envoys  had  been  sent  and  received  by  most 
of  the  courts  for  several  centuries.  But  the  first  of  these  resident  envoys 
were  usually  favorites  of  the  court  that  sent  them  and  had  little  to  do 
with  diplomacy  as  we  understand  the  term.  To  send  a  resident  ambas- 
sador to  another  court  meant  then  that  one  monarch  wished  to  pay  a  com- 
pliment to  another.  That  personages  so  delegated  did  now  and  then 
occupy  themselves  with  international  aflfairs  is  quite  possible,  but  on  the 
whole  they  seem  to  have  been  true  to  their  proper  mission,  and  that  was 
10  say  little  and  let  their  presence  speak  for  itself.  To  have  an  ambassador 
at  another  court  was  the  equivalent  then  of  attesting  that  there  was  friend- 
ship between  the  two  monarchs.  It  meant  little  more,  as  is  proved  by  the 
practice  of  sending  special  envoys  whenever  some  bit  of  state  business 
had  to  be  attended  to. 

It  would  seem  that  ambassadors  were  not  always  as  well  received 
as  was  expected.  The  first  European  ambassadors  who  arrived  at  the 
court  of  a  Turkish  Sultan  were  presented  to  His  Majesty  in  strong 
cages  especially  made  for  the  occasion.  It  is  a  matter  of  record  that  the 
Prussian  envoy  did  not  relish  this  treatment  and  complained  to  his  govern- 
ment. But  the  Turk  was  in  those  days  a  master  in  Europe.  His  domain 
extended  as  far  north  as  the  Carpathians,  Budapest  and  the  neighborhood 
of  Vienna,  and  when  the  Sultan  saw  fit  to  receive  ambassadors  in  a  cage 
there  was  no  help  for  it. 

The  Turk  had  but  a  little  while  before  emerged  from  Asia  Minor 

12 


DIPLOMATISTS  AND  THEIR  CRAFT  13 

and  his  notions  as  to  dignity  were  still  somewhat  Oriental.  In  this  case 
they  dated  back  to  the  days  of  Darius  and  the  Persian  kings  generally. 

So  far  as  known,  the  first  ambassadors  of  record  who  negotiated  a 
treaty  are  Tarte-sebu  and  Rames,  mentioned  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  treaty  made  between  Rameses  II  and  Kheta-sar 
speaks  of  other  treaties,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  other  ambassadors  had 
been  similarly  employed,  except  it  be  that  the  treaties  mentioned  were 
negotiated  by  the  high  contracting  parties  in  question  themselves.  If  the 
usual  method  of  doing  things,  as  prevailing  in  those  days,  figures  in  this 
case,  the  facts  are  probably  that  Mauthnuro  had  offended  the  Pharaoh, 
had  thereby  loosed  the  dogs  of  war  on  himself,  and  had  been  defeated 
and  killed,  with  his  brother  Kheta-sar  succeeding  him  to  the  throne.  The 
new  king  of  the  Hittites  acknowledged  evidently  whatever  conditions  had 
been  imposed  upon  him,  and,  agreeable  with  his  status  of  inferior,  pos- 
sibly vassal  to  Rameses  II,  sent  his  ambassador  to  the  Egyptian  court. 
Of  interest  is  that  the  treaty,  despite  its  fervent  assurances  that  there  shall 
be  friendship  between  the  two  kings  forever,  did  not  enjoy  too  long  a  span 
of  life,  it  would  seem.  Rameses  III,  who  was  king  of  Egypt  from  1202 
to  1170  B.  C.,  is  pictured  in  a  tablet  at  Medinet  Habu  as  receiving  the  hands 
of  slain  Hittites,  while  an  inscription  explains  that  the  expedition  against 
the  ''chief  of  the  Kheta"  was  undertaken  because  he  organized  a  coalition 
of  all  Syria  against  Egypt.  This  act,  by  the  way,  if  the  inscription  is 
to  be  trusted,  terminated,  for  good,  a  case  of  relations  that  had  existed 
a  good  many  years  before  Rameses  made  the  treaty  of  record,  as  is  shown 
by  an  allusion  to  treaties  made  between  Sety  I,  of  Egypt,  and  Marsar, 
of  Kheta,  and  another  concluded  by  Horemheb,  of  Egypt,  and  Saparuru, 
of  Kheta.      (See  Appendix — The  Battle  of  Kadesh.) 

The  ambassadors  we  hear  of  before  Tarte-sebu  and  Rames  seem  to 
have  acted  in  the  capacity  of  parliamentary.  Their  person  seems  to  have 
been  secure  in  all  cases.  The  very  first  instance  of  this  brought  to 
our  attention  by  the  records  of  the  Ancients  dates  back  to  2960  B.  C. 

Diplomatic  Privileges  of  Ancient  Origin 

The  practice  of  giving  safe  conduct  to  ambassadors  is  an  old  and 
universal  one,  and  was  necessary  if  the  person  charged  with  communicat- 
ing with  an  enemy  or  foreign  court  was  to  discharge  his  duties.  Even 
savages  have  subscribed  to  the  inviolability  of  the  person  of  an  ambassa- 
dor, which  is  nothing  unusual  since  both  sides  were  obliged  to  reckon 
with  the  possibility  of  having  to  send  a  parliamentary.  The  case  is  one 
of  self-interest  and  the  surprising  thing  about  it  is  that  in  our  own  days 
this  very  simple  matter  has  expanded  into  a  good  many  f  oolsome  notions, 


14  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

known  collectively  as  the  giving  of  diplomatic  privileges.  In  addition 
to  extending  extra-territoriality  to  the  seat  of  a  diplomatic  mission,  be 
U  embassy  or  legation,  governments  subscribe  to,  and  guarantee,  the 
inviolability  of  the  telegraphic  dispatches,  in  cypher  or  texte  claire,  and 
the  mail  of  a  diplomatic  mission.  When  censorship  has  completely  de- 
prived the  ordinary  citizen  of  the  right  to  use  the  telegraph,  cable  and 
mails,  without  having  the  censors  know  the  full  contents  of  the  dispatch 
or  letter,  diplomatists,  provided  the  "privileges"  have  not  been  withdrawn, 
as  happened  so  often  during  the  War,  may  telegraph,  cable  and  write 
in  letters  what  they  please.  The  diplomatic  courier,  in  charge  of  a  mail 
bag,  is  about  the  only  individual  in  mufti  who  in  times  of  war  can  cross 
the  borders  of  belligerent  countries  without  being  subjected  to  the  closest 
search. 

There  are  many  minor  privileges  which  are  granted  members  of 
the  diplomatic  service.  They  may  import  and  export  whatever  they 
please,  and  without  paying  customs  dues.  Misdemeanors  and  even  crimes 
are  made  the  subject  of  diplomatic  correspondence  instead  of  being  aired 
in  the  municipal  courts  of  a  country.  There  is  a  case  on  record  in  which 
a  diplomatist  shot  and  killed  several  persons  without  suffering  greater 
punishment  for  it  than  comes  of  being  transferred  to  another  and  better 
post. 

The  life  of  a  diplomatist  on  post  is  one  long  ceremonial.  While  the 
foreign  offices  have  now  generally  ruled  that  diplomatic  callers  will  be 
received  in  order  of  their  arrival,  strict  attention  is  still  paid  to  the  rules 
of  precedence  at  official  functions  to  which  ambassadors  and  ministers  and 
their  secretaries  are  invited.  The  dean  of  the  corps  diplomatique,  as  the 
ranking  resident  ambassador  is  usually  known,  is  a  person  whose  dis- 
pleasure it  will  not  pay  to  invite.  To  his  equipment  for  the  post  he  holds 
belongs  a  knowledge,  and  a  thorough  one,  of  one  of  the  most  intricate 
set  of  social  rules  known.  Great  tact  is  necessary  besides,  though  the 
tendency,  now  evident  in  most  capitals,  to  give  precedence  to  ambassadors 
and  ministers  in  accord  with  length  of  service  at  the  post  has  much  reduced 
the  possibility  of  friction  which  existed  in  the  days  when  diplomatists 
insisted  that  the  relative  standing  of  the  ruler  they  represented  was  also 
to  be  considered  in  assigning  them  places  at  banquet  tables,  or  in  the  lines 
that  are  formed  at  receptions  and  similar  affairs  at  court.  To  be  punc- 
tilious in  the  extreme  is  considered  not  only  proper,  but  absolutely  neces- 
sary by  some  diplomatists,  especially  that  class  which  by  the  newcomers 
in  the  service  is  styled,  as  has  ever  been  the  case,  the  "old  school." 

There  is  a  popular  impression  that  ambassadors  and  ministers  are 
accredited  by  one  government  to  another  government.  Such  is  not  the 
case.    In  addition  to  having  greatly  magnified  the  inviolability  of  the  person 


DIPLOMATIC  PRIVILEGES  OF  ANCIENT  ORIGIN        15 

of  an  ambassador,  handed  to  us  by  the  Ancients,  we  have  clung  tenaciously 
to  the  habit  of  having  ambassadors  and  ministers  seem  the  personal  repre- 
sentatives of  kings  and  presidents.  So  far  as  this  concerns  the  United 
States,  I  may  mention  that  the  American  chief  of  mission  is  not  ac- 
credited by  the  State  Department  to  some  foreign  office,  but  by  the  presi- 
dent personally  to  the  person  of  the  foreign  potentate. 

Instructions  to  a  chief  of  mission  come  as  a  rule  from  the  branch 
of  the  government  charged  with  the  care  of  foreign  affairs,  the  State 
Department  in  the  case  of  the  United  States.  The  ambassador  or  minister 
on  the  other  hand  addresses  all  of  his  communications  to  the  same  branch 
of  the  government.  That  arrangement  does  not  preclude,  however,  that 
the  actual  head  of  the  government  also  address  his  representative,  or 
that  the  latter  place  himself  in  direct  communication  with  the  head  of 
the  government  in  case  he  is  invited  to  do  so,  or  thinks  that  departure 
from  the  regular  practice  proper. 

When  the  chief  of  a  diplomatic  mission  is  absent,  or  possibly  prevented 
from  attending  to  his  duties  by  sickness,  the  diplomatist  next  to  him, 
usually  the  so-called  conseiller,  or  counselor,  assumes  the  name  of  charge 
d'aif aires  and  as  such  charges  himself  with  the  affairs  of  the  post,  be  it 
embassy  or  legation — that  is,  he  attends  to  the  duties  of  the  chief  of 
the  mission,  known  as  chef  de  mission.  All  terms  and  designations  in 
the  diplomatic  service  are  French,  because  it  is  the  language  in  which, 
less  rigorously  now  than  formerly,  the  intercourse  between  the  foreign 
government  and  the  diplomatic  missions  is  still  effected.  Hence  such 
terms  as  here  already  used  and  such  others  as  these:  Note,  note  verhale, 
memoire,  conversation,  pourparlers,  laissez-passer,  passeporte  and  many 
others. 

Diplomats  Receive  Scant  Salsuries 

In  addition  to  the  conseiller,  each  diplomatic  mission  has  a  number 
of  secretaries,  known  as  first,  second,  third  and  so  on.  These  men,  too, 
despite  the  fact  that  their  pay  is  usually  a  mere  pittance,  subscribe,  among 
themselves  even,  to  precedence,  as  will  their  wives  at  social  events.  Need- 
less to  say,  the  secretaries,  not  forgetting  the  military  and  naval  attaches, 
and  the  commercial  experts,  diplomatic  agents,  and  what  not,  are  generally 
people  with  enough  private  income  to  make  them  independent  of  the 
small  salary  paid  by  the  majority  of  governments.  If  they  do  not  have 
such  incomes  they  will  not  stay  in  the  service  long.  To  be  a  poor  diplo- 
matist is  nothing  short  of  wasting  one's  life  entirely. 

The  lesser  secretaries  and  clerks  of  a  diplomatic  post  concern  them- 
selves with  routine  matters,  such  as  issuing  and  viseing  passports,  getting 


16  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

a  compatriot  out  of  trouble  occasionally,  especially  after  he  has  appealed 
to  the  government  at  home  through  his  senator.  I  make  special  reference 
to  this  because  normally  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  interest  an  American 
diplomatist  in  the  troubles  of  an  American  citizen,  except  upon  special 
instruction  from  the  State  Department.  The  United  States  diplomatic 
and  consular  services  are  notorious  for  this  the  world  over. 

The  popular  notion  that  in  times  of  peace  the  post  of  ambassador 
is  purely  decorative,  and  that  his  function  is  confined  to  delivering  with 
due  decorum  the  communications  of  the  government  he  represents,  and 
receiving  others  in  a  like  manner,  is  more  of  a  fallacy  in  many  cases 
than  has  been  thought.  It  takes  a  war  to  bring  out  at  least  some  truths. 
The  Great  War  made  it  only  too  apparent  that  some  of  the  ambassadors 
in  Europe  had  not  been  entirely  messenger  boys,  as  I  propose  showing 
here.  At  the  same  time  I  must  state  that  the  United  States  diplomatic 
representatives  seem  to  have  occupied  themselves  with  little  enough  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  War. 

It  has  been  brought  to  light  that  diplomatists  of  the  balance  of  power 
in  Europe,  to  wit:  The  Triple  Alliance  and  the  Triple  Entente,  had 
been  very  busy  for  some  years  preceding  the  general  debacle.  Upon 
orders  from  their  governments  and  upon  personal  initiative,  these  men, 
if  not  actually  trying  to  avert  the  immediate  coming  of  the  disaster,  did 
their  best  to  postpone  its  advent  until  the  moment  when  a  declaration  of 
war  would  be  most  propitious  to  their  own  side.  Diplomatists,  as  a  rule  are 
not  patriots  of  the  rabid  sort.  For  all  that  they  are  patriotic  enough,  though 
their  sentiments  in  that  respect  are  somewhat  colored  by  personal  and 
professional  interests.  Especially  is  this  true  of  the  so-called  arrivistes — 
men  who  are  prone  to  shape  diplomacy  to  suit  their  own  ends.  An 
individual  of  that  type  will  walk  on  the  brink  of  war  for  months  in  the 
hope  that  ultimately  he  may  settle  to  his  own  profit  a  situation  he  may 
have  artificially  caused  in  order  to  get  an  opportunity  for  the  display 
of  his  talents. 

To  describe  the  operations  of  a  diplomatist  may  be  very  simple  and 
again  it  may  be  most  difficult.  It  depends  upon  the  government  whom 
he  represents  and  its  affiliations  in  world  politics,  and,  again,  upon  his 
standing  at  his  locale  or  post.  A  diplomatic  representative  of  the  United 
States,  for  instance,  has  very  little  to  do  in  normal  times.  In  the  course 
of  a  week  he  might  call  once  or  twice  at  the  foreign  office,  just  to  show 
his  face,  as  it  were,  and  now  and  then  he  may  actually  have  to  handle 
a  small  case.  Once  or  twice  a  year  he  would  attend  some  state  function 
at  court,  present  the  congratulations  of  the  president  on  the  occasion  of 
the  ruler's  birthday  and  do  as  much  on  his  own  behalf  on  the  anniversary 
of  the  premier,  possibly  the  minister  of  foreign  aflfairs,  and  such  other 


DIPLOMATS  RECEIVE  SCANT  SALARIES  17 

high  officials  as  he  might  have  come  to  know.  His  official  business  ended 
with  that.  The  United  States  was  not  mixing  in  the  politics  of  Europe, 
and  for  that  reason  the  ambassador  or  minister  had  ample  time  in  which 
to  cultivate  his  social  opportunities,  if  so  inclined,  and  usually  he  was 
that  inordinately. 

It  was  rather  different  with  the  European  diplomatists  at  the  capitals 
of  the  World  Powers.  Most  of  them  had  a  rather  strenuous  time  of 
it  always.  When  it  was  no  affair  of  their  own  government,  or  of  the 
government  to  which  they  were  accredited,  that  concerned  them,  it  was 
the  real  or  fancied  activity  of  a  fellow  diplomatist  that  kept  them  occu- 
pied. There  was  always  the  danger  that  this  or  that  government  might 
be  interested  in  a  rapprochement  with  the  government  of  his  post,  and 
if  he  could  not  do  anything  to  prevent  its  perfection  he  at  least  had  to 
keep  his  government  informed  on  what  was  being  attempted  or  actually 
done.  Generally  it  was  not  the  fait  accompli  that  bothered  these  men  to 
any  extent.  It  was  the  making  of  such  accomplished  facts  that  caused  them 
to  keep  their  wits  ever  sharp  and  their  minds  ever  alert — ^that  is  to  say,  if 
they  understood  not  only  their  business  but  their  duty,  which  in  the  diplo- 
matist are  two  separate  things. 

In  preventing  another  diplomatist  stealing  a  march  on  them,  the 
ambassadors  and  ministers  in  Europe  found  their  regular  staff  of  attaches 
very  useles  generally.  At  best  the  conseiller  and  secretaries  could  act  as 
intermediaries  between  the  chef  de  mission  and  the  many  private  informers 
who  were  willing  to  be  of  use  for  a  consideration.  Informers  of  that 
sort  were  not  rare,  of  course.  They  might  rank  from  an  underpaid  sons- 
secretaire,  who  in  order  to  be  a  hero  at  some  cabaret  sold  the  secrets  of 
his  government,  to  the  person  who  emptied  the  wastepaper  baskets  in  the 
^foreign  office  or  got  away  with  the  blotters  that  might  reveal  some  secret 
in  a  telltale  mirror.  The  servants  of  high  government  officials  also  were 
sought  for,  and  above  all  it  was  important  to  have  somebody  on  intimate 
terms  with  the  lady  that  was  supposed  to  be  bestowing  her  affection  upon 
men  active  in  foreign  affairs. 

Diplomacy  as  Seen  Ad  Hominem 

But  that  sort  of  work  did  not  stop  here.  It  was  necessary  that  the 
several  members  of  the  diplomatic  corps  spy  upon  one  another.  In  fact, 
there  were  several  embassies  in  London,  Paris,  Petrograd,  Berlin  and 
Vienna  that  needed  much  closer  watching  than  either  Downing  Street, 
the  Quai  d'Orsay,  Novski  Prospect,  the  Wilhelmstrasse  or  the  Ballhaus- 
platz.  The  modus  operandi  was  similar  to  that  employed  in  the  case  of 
the  foreign  office.    Lucky  was  always  the  man  who  managed  to  get  into 


\ 


v 


18  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  confidence,  second  hand,  of  course,  of  the  matt r esse  of  the  ambassador 
who  was  credited  with  evil  designs.  Since  ambassadors  seem  to  have  a 
failing  for  such  attachment,  much  of  Europe's  politics  before  the  War 
was  shaped  and  reshaped  via  the  boudoir.  The  world  will  marvel  at  this, 
or  should  do  so.  That  the  sweet  lips  of  a  diplomatic  sweetheart  should 
have  contributed  to  the  killing  of  7,254,000  able-bodied  men,  the  maiming 
for  life  of  millions  of  others,  the  starvation  and  death  of  millions  of  infants 
and  adults  and  the  wasting  of,  roundly,  $450,000,000,000  seems  incredible. 
Yet  such  is  the  fact.  World  politics  reduced  to  cases  ad  hominem  are  a 
very  queer  spectacle. 

Before  I  attempt  to  say  more  of  this  let  me  remind  of  the  attitude 
of  the  public  to  almost  anybody  connected  with  the  diplomatic  service. 
To  be  in  the  diplomatic  service  was  considered  a  great  distinction.  With- 
out being  in  any  way  entitled  to  it,  the  average  diplomatist,  and  that 
is  putting  it  mildly,  was  surrounded  by  a  nimbus  that  would  have  done 
honor  to  any  saint.  Without  wishing  at  all  to  appear  facetious  I  would 
say  that  diplomatists  before  the  Great  War  were  awe-inspiring  figures  to 
the  average  mortal.  I  hasten  to  make  the  same  assurance  before  I  say 
that  they  seemed  to  be  the  last  of  the  gods — remnants  of  the  Gotterdam- 
merung,  whom  the  iconoclast  had  overlooked.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that 
some  men  in  the  diplomatic  service  did  not  deserve  some  such  tribute. 

The  ambassador  who  can  keep  his  country  out  of  war  deserves  prompt 
translation  to  the  Elysian  fields.  A  few  men  have  actually  done  that 
and  very  many  have  claimed  that  they  did  it.  A  fine  foundation, 
indeed,  for  the  credulity  of  the  masses.  Those  who  were  not  familiar 
enough  with  the  ins  and  outs  of  diplomacy  to  know  this  knew,  at  least, 
that  the  diplomatist  always  had  it  in  his  hands  to  start  a  war  when  he 
saw  fit.  Such,  at  least,  was  another  popular  notion  concerning  ambassa- 
dors. Since  man  is  so  constituted  that  he  reveres  the  evil  god  as  much 
as  the  good  deity  it  really  made  not  much  difference  which  of  the  two 
versions  was  the  base  of  the  reverence  brought  the  diplomatist.  After 
all  did  not  one's  own  government  show  such  a  person  all  the  consideration 
that  could  be  shown? 

Many  of  the  men  in  the  diplomatic  service  knew  this  well  enough 
and,  being  after  all  but  human  beings,  they  enjoyed  it.  Successful  men 
of  affairs  especially  had  their  fancies  tickled  when  contemplating  them- 
selves in  the  circles  of  awe-struck  friends  as  a  diplomatist,  who  could 
deny  that  he  was  a  modern  Atlas  but  infer  by  his  mien  that  he  really  was 
that  and  much  more.  It  was  for  this  reason,  and  for  the  wife's  social 
ambitions,  that  many  a  man  contributed  to  a  political  campaign  fund 
until  it  hurt  on  the  promise  that,  his  party  winning,  he  would  be  made 
ambassador  to  this  or  that  court. 


DIPLOMACY  AS  SEEN  AD  HOMINBM  19 

The  United  States  government  has  been  especially  culpable  in  that 
respect,  though  hardly  more  so  than  some  of  the  other  governments  that 
needed  but  a  so-called  figurehead  in  the  European  capitals.  Diplomacy 
in  Europe  was  thought  so  innocuous  by  most  of  the  American  governments 
that  it  became  common  practice  down  to  Cape  Horn  to  sell  diplomatic 
posts  to  the  highest  bidder. 

At  one  time  even  the  secretaries  were  appointed  in  this  manner. 
The  reforms  instituted  by  the  late  Mr.  Roosevelt  changed  that,  however. 
Diplomatic  secretaries,  together  with  their  much-disliked  confreres  in 
the  consular  service,  were  expected  to  know  something  after  that — a  little 
of  international  law  and  good  social  deportment  at  any  rate.  Up  to  that 
time  it  had  been  nothing  unusual  to  have  United  States  diplomatic  secre- 
taries who  employed  in  their  speech  the  double  negative.  Not  that  a  man 
of  such  social  handicaps  may  not  be  a  good  man.  The  fact  is  that  he  is 
hardly  an  ornament  to  the  corps  diplomatique  at  a  capital  of  a  World 
Power.     At  Sofia  he  might  do;  at  Vienna,  for  instance,  never. 

Governments  having  big  stakes  in  the  European  political  situation 
were  more  particular,  though  not  alwa3''s  as  fortunate,  in  the  appointment 
of  ambassadors  and  ministers.  The  safest  way  to  keep  out  of  trouble  in  a 
country  where  one's  interests  are  small  was  to  have  as  chef  de  mission 
a  wealthy  man  interested  in  nothing  but  his  own  glory  and  the  social 
advancement  of  his  wife  and  daughters.  The  great  powers  of  Europe 
were  not  in  a  position  to  follow  this  rule. 

The  European  Professional  Diplomatist 

The  diplomatists  in  the  service  of  the  World  Powers  were  of  the 
strictly  professional  type.  All  of  them  had  enjoyed  the  preferments  of 
^  good  education  and  an  efficient  nursery.  Station  and  a  moderate  amount 
of  private  income  was  theirs.  For  some  years  at  least  they  had  been 
trained  in  their  craft  in  the  foreign  office.  After  that  they  had  been 
given  a  small  secretaryship.  In  the  course  of  time  they  had  become 
conseiller,  then  minister  and  later  ambassador,  provided  they  belonged,  in 
the  case  of  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary,  to  either  the  Ho  chad  el  or 
Uradel — high  nobility  or  archaic  nobility  in  free  translation,  or  were  of 
enough  importance  otherwise,  which  was  none  too  often  the  case.  For 
rapid  advancement  in  Germany  it  was  necessary  to  have  studied  at  Bonn 
or  Heidelberg  so  that  one  might  belong  to  the  student  fraternity  known  as 
the  Borussia,  to  which  the  male  members  of  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty 
have  belonged  for  many  generations. 

In  Russia  the  case  was  much  the  same,  though  nobility  per  se  was 
riot  the  open  sesame  it  was  in  the  Central  Empires.     If  one  had  enough 


20  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

money  one  could  get  into  the  diplomatic  service  without  much  trouble. 
If  one  had  enough  political  backing  one  could  become  an  ambassador 
after  a  reasonable  length  of  service  in  minor  capacities.  France  followed 
more  or  less  the  same  plan.  Money  was  a  great  consideration  also  to 
become  diplomat e  de  carrier c,  and  if  one  had  enough  senators  and  ex- 
senators  to  promote  one's  aspirations,  an  ambassadorship  could  be  had. 
Great  Britain's  method  does  not  differ  much  from  this,  though  now  and 
then  a  fat  post  is;  given  to  a  deserving  politician  of  the  statesman  type. 

What  has  been  said  in  these  three  instances  applied  more  or  less  to 
every  other  government  in  Europe.  Always  one  of  the  prime  prerequi- 
sites was  that  the  aspirant  for  diplomatic  honor  have  sufficient  private 
means  to  look  upon  the  small  salary  paid  him  as  enough  to  meet  his 
pourboires.  A  little  ability,  a  great  deal  of  training,  and  much  inborn 
savoir  faire  constituted  the  purely  personal  qualifications.  Political  and 
social  backing  did  the  rest. 

The  diplomatic  service  almost  everywhere  looks  upon  itself  as  a  sort 
of  cult.  The  caste  has  social  rites  of  its  own  and  is  extremely  exclusive. 
So  long  as  the  man  in  the  service  is  below  middle  age  he  is  prone  to  be 
a  most  exasperating  snub  towards  inferiors,  socially  and  officially,  while 
towards  his  superiors,  and  they  are  not  many,  he  will  show  a  certain 
amount  of  servility  without  feeling  it,  as  a  rule.  There  is  one  thing  which 
the  diplomatist  learns  quite  early  in  his  career:  To  have  a  good  opinion 
of  himself  and  to  feign  self-assurance  so  long  as  he  does  not  actually  have 
this.  He  is  very  much  of  an  enfant  gatee  of  his  government,  and  the 
government  to  which  he  is  accredited,  from  each  of  which  he  takes  a 
goodly  share  of  the  infallibility  that  is  accorded  such  institutions  by  the 
complacent  public.  To  feel  that  the  organization  to  which  one  is  so 
V  closely  allied  is  infallible  is  an  invitation  to  conceit  which  few  men  can 
withstand. 

Governments  themselves  never  admit  that  their  diplomatic  service  is 
capable  of  making  mistakes.  In  the  chancelleries  that  notion  is  not  held, 
of  course,  but  toward  the  public  that  deception  must  be  kept  up.  The 
diplomatist,  therefore,  finds  it  easy  to  preserve  that  superiority  which  to 
the  uninitiated  seems  all  too  real.  A  government  may  be  open  to  attack 
in  the  press  in  all  other  respects,  but,  strange  to  say,  it  is  a  rare  occurrence 
to  see  its  diplomatic  service  criticised  from  the  point  of  view  of  personnel. 
The  service  is  sacrosanct.  It  is  this  for  the  reason  that  it  is  recruited,  gen- 
erally, from  the  classes  whose  influence  is  great ;  that  is  so  poorly  paid  in 
most  cases,  and,  finally,  that  it  has  always  been  treading  on  thin  ice  to 
inquire  too  deeply  into  any  of  the  things  that  concern  the  holy  precincts  of 
a  foreign  office  or  state  department. 

The  older  professional  diplomatists  discard  some  of  the  silly  notions 


THE  EUROPEAN  PROFESSIONAL  DIPLOMATIST        21 

they  held  in  their  own  novitiate.  They  are  no  longer  the  enthusiasts 
of  youth.  In  the  course  of  years  they  have  learned  that  much  in  life 
is  futile.  The  plaint  of  Koheleth  that  vanitas  vanitatum  vanitas  so  much 
is  governed  here  below,  comes  to  have  a  great  meaning  to  them.  At  first 
they  become  cynics,  and  later,  provided  there  is  enough  of  the  milk  of 
human  kindness  left  in  them,  benign  pessimists.  A  life  in  which  deceit 
and  simulation  is  the  daily  portion,  so  far  as  one's  own  conduct  is  con- 
cerned, and  in  which  the  words  and  acts  of  others  must  be  regarded  with 
the  keenest  skepticism,  is  bound  to  leave  the  mind  in  that  frame.  Thor- 
oughly disillusioned,  these  men  may  come  to  the  point  where  honesty 
is  a  salve  to  them — a  balm  of  Gilead  as  hard  to  find  as  the  thing  Diogenes 
looked  for  with  a  lantern  in  the  streets  of  Athens. 

On  the  Mentality  of  Diplomatists 

I  have  before  made  the  statement  that  diplomatists  are  patriots 
of  a  somewhat  peculiar  stripe.  The  good  diplomatist  is  never  a  ranter. 
He  knows  the  enemy  people  and  their  problems  too  well  by  the  time  he 
might  harangue  against  them,  and  has  too  fine  a  conception  of  dignity 
withal  to  contribute  to  the  flood  of  abuse  that  is  heaped  upon  men  and 
women  who  before  the  declaration  of  war  may  have  been  thought  ever 
so  good.  It  is  the  diplomatist  who  realizes,  more  than  anybody  else,  that 
war  is  the  continuation  of  diplomacy  with  other  means.  He  knows  that 
war  has  come  simply  because  the  peace  means  of  diplomacy  failed. 
Whether  or  no  he  had  a  share  in  the  bringing  on  of  the  disaster,  he  under- 
stands on  how  little  the  fate  of  international  relations  often  turns.  In 
addition  to  that  he  realizes  that  his  diplomatic  career  in  the  future  might 
be  adversely  influenced  by  what  he  could  say.  Certain  it  is  that  every 
foreign  office  in  the  world  would  give  the  closest  attention  to  his  utter- 
ances and  that  would  be  enough  to  make  him  persona  non  grata.  To 
have  spoken  at  all  would  be  considered  a  faux  pas.  The  talking  diplo- 
matist does  not  remain  a  diplomatist  long;  promotion  at  least  is  out  of 
the  question.  What  the  government  exacts  from  its  diplomatic  service 
it  expects  of  the  diplomatists  of  other  governments. 

Thus  it  happens  that  the  diplomatist  to  whom  the  passports  were 
handed  does  not,  as  a  rule,  reappear  on  the  scene  during  the  period  of 
hostilities.  My  own  experience  is  that  most  of  these  men  could  not  be 
induced  to  talk.  There  is  no  human  being  that  can  be  wholly  indiflferent 
to  the  facts  of  life.  The  diplomatist  may  defy  them  for  years  in  the 
routine  of  his  activity,  but  he  cannot  deny  them.  When  war  comes  and 
the  flood  gates  of  vituperation  and  calumny  are  down  the  decent  diplo- 
matist  (if  there  be  such  a  thing)   remains  generally  the  only  one  who 


22  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

has  nothing  to  say.  He  knows  what  the  facts  in  the  case  are,  and  even 
if  he  should  not  know  all  of  them  he  understands  his  metier  too  well  to 
accept  that  all  is  so  very  onesided.  The  pretexts  advanced  by  the  parties 
at  war  do  not  interest  him  personally.  He  may  take  a  professional  interest 
in  them,  but  knows  that  back  of  them  lies  a  cause  far  greater  than  he 

\  could  regulate  or  direct.  War  is  to  him  a  detail  of  the  laws  of  nature. 
He  realizes,  more  than  any  other  class  and  individual,  that  before  war 
can  be  eliminated  man  generally  must  improve. 

Men  of  that  type  are  likely  to  be  included  in  what  the  younger 
element  in  the  diplomatic  service  is  fond  of  calling:  The  Old  School. 
I'here  has  always  been  an  old  and  a  new  school  in  diplomacy,  and  the 
distinction  has  been  made  either  by  the  newcomers  in  the  service  or  by 
the  arrivistes,  who  found  the  sane  and  conservative  men  de  carrier e  in 
the  way.  In  recent  years  the  young  and  arrivist  diplomatists  have  drawn 
the  line  between  themselves  and  their  elders  where  Metternichism  and  the 
"new  diplomacy"  were  supposed  to  meet.  The  trouble  with  this  was  that 
this  new  diplomacy  was  as  Machiavellian  as  the  older  variety.  So  long 
as  into  the  art  of  negotiation  enters  a  great  deal  of  duplicity,  so  long  will 
it  remain  the  sharp  game  of  wits  it  is. 

There  is  much  more  comraderie  in  the  corps  diplomatique  at  a  capital 
than  is  generally  found  among  members  of  the  same  service.  It  is  a 
notorious  fact  that  relations  between  the  embassies  and  legations  are 
much  more  sincere  and  congenial  than  they  are  within  the  confines  of 
the  mission  itself,  or  within  the  same  service.  The  trip  made  by  Colonel 
House  to  Europe  in  the  winter  of  1915-16  was  undertaken  partly  for  the 
purpose  of  settling  the  difficulties  that  existed  between  the  United  States 

^  diplomatic  posts  at  London,  The  Hague,  Berlin,  Vienna  and  Berne.  The 
chefs  de  mission  at  these  points  did  not  agree  with  one  another  on  any- 
thing. There  was  a  great  deal  of  interference  with  one  another's  affairs. 
Quite  early  in  the  War,  in  the  fall  of  1914,  Mr.  Henry  van  Dyke,  minister 
at  The  Hague,  had  undertaken,  without  the  least  authority,  to  examine 
the  mails  of  Mr.  James  W.  Gerard,  ambassador  at  Berlin.  In  these  mails 
Mr.  van  Dyke  had  found  matter  which  he  thought  did  not  belong  there, 
and,  though  not  enjoying  the  powers  of  a  censor,  so  far  as  the  others 
knew,  he  had  destroyed  some  of  this  matter,  as  on  one  occasion  he  stated 
to  me.  Naturally,  the  Berlin  embassy  did  not  like  this.  Mr.  Gerard  him- 
self was  not  anxious  to  have  his  diplomatic  mail  littered  with  matter  of 
that  sort,  but,  and  properly  so,  took  the  stand  that  his  mail  was  as  invio- 
late at  the  hands  of  a  brother  diplomatist  as  it  was  supposed  to  be  at  the 
hands  of  the  government  to  which  he  was  accredited. 

A  little  later  the  London  embassy  undertook  to  take  over  the  duty 
The   Hague  legation   had   charged   itself   with.     The   result   was   more 


ON  THE  MENTALITY  OF  DIPLOMATISTS  23 

friction.  The  United  States  embassy  at  Vienna  had  trouble  when  Mr. 
Frederic  C.  Penfield,  its  chief,  began  to  use  the  diplomatic  mail  and 
courier  to  import  from  London  such  articles  of  apparel  as  men  of  means 
will  buy,  and  such  tidbits  of  the  table  as  the  Vienna  market  offered 
no  longer.  An  attempt  after  that  to  get  these  things  via  Paris  caused  the 
United  States  legation  at  Berne  to  worry.  One  thing  led  to  another, 
and  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  several  United  States  diplomatic 
missions  in  Central  Europe  were  about  to  break  off  relations  with  one 
another.    The  good  offices  of  Colonel  House  prevented  war. 

Incidents  of  that  sort  are  not  confined  to  any  particular  service, 
however,  though  in  this  instance  they  degenerated  into  an  affair  between 
\  fishwives.  As  a  rule,  the  members  of  the  same  service  have  great 
difficulty  being  civil  to  one  another,  except  it  be  that  they  have  made 
'"  special  pacts  to  promote  one  another.  A  world  that  thinks  entirely  in 
terms  of  treaties,  alliances  and  ententes  is  all  too  apt  to  spread  over 
its  private  affairs  the  varnish  of  its  official  conduct — its  profession. 

De  Schelking,  in  his  book,  ^'Recollections  of  a  Russian  Diplomat," 
tells  the  rather  interesting  story  how  Baron  von  Schon,  of  the  German 
diplomatic  service,  and  ambassador  in  Paris  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
War,  and  M.  Isvolski,  of  the  Russian  diplomatic  service,  and  ambassador 
in  Paris  also  at  the  coming  of  the  debacle,  made  a  pact  years  before  at 
Copenhagen  to  promote  one  another's  interests.  The  two  men  were  then 
on  post  at  the  Danish  capital,  not  the  most  hopeful  place  in  Europe. 
It  was  decided  that  Schon  should  get  to  Petrograd  as  German  ambassador, 
while  Isvolski  was  to  be  Russian  ambassador  at  Berlin.  A  piece  of 
international  deviltry  which  they  had  promoted  in  the  interest  of  Russia 
and  Germany  and  to  the  detriment  of  Denmark  in  the  summer  of  1905 
was  to  be  the  fulcrum  of  the  scheme,  the  promotion  of  better  relations 
between  the  two  empires  the  lever. 

In  the  end  they  succeeded  in  promoting  one  another,  though  not  as 
per  schedule.  Isvolski  was  made  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  a  post  he 
held  from  1906  to  1909,  while  Schon  ultimately  was  appointed  ambas- 
sador at  Paris,  where  Isvolski  found  him  later  on,  and  where  the  two 
together  saw  what  had  become  of  the  great  scheme  they  were  a  part  of. 

I  quote  the  case  as  a  good  illustration  of  how  the  "good"  relations 
between  governments  and  nations  may  have  a  purely  personal  basis  and 
*  what  diplomatists  can  do  when  they  set  their  minds  to  it.    While  this  was 

going  on,  Russia  was  bound  to  France  by  a  treaty  of  alliance,  and  there 
were  times  when  this  treaty  might  have  become  a  scrap  of  paper  overnight. 
The  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  Isvolski,  was  still  the  same 
Isvolski  who  made  the  pact  with  Schon,  and  the  Russian  ambassador  at 
Paris,  Isvolski,  while  in  the  course  of  time  he  might  have  changed,  was 


24  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

still  a  man  susceptible  to  influences  that  were  not  particularly  pro-French 
nor  in  any  way  too  friendly  to  the  Franco-Russian  entente. 

A  Hjrpothetical  Demonstration  of  Diplomacy 

There  is  no  situation  in  international  affairs  that  is  too  much  for  two 
diplomatists  of  influence  and  ability  who  have  made  up  their  minds  to 
change  it.  Indeed,  one  of  them  can  do  it,  if  he  be  unscrupulous  enough. 
The  means  at  his  disposal,  especially  the  fact  that  he  can  always  falsely 
\  incriminate  any  government  and  diplomatic  mission,  make  that  perfectly 
simple.  His  government  will  always  believe  him.  It  will  never  believe 
another  government  or  its  representative.  Even  if  the  facts  ultimately 
corroborate  the  protestant's  statement,  skepticism  will  remain.  It  will 
be  said  that  the  entente  or  alliance,  or  whatever  it  was  the  falsely  accused 
wished  to  engineer,  was  not  carried  into  being  and  effect  because  something 
else  interfered.  In  diplomacy  all  rumors  are  looked  upon  as  at  least  half- 
truths  and  every  false  move  on  the  part  of  a  foreign  ofiice  or  diplomatist 
constitutes  a  fait  accompli.  To  try  at  a  thing  and  fail  has  the  same  effect 
as  to  succeed.  The  unsuccessful  negotiation  of  a  treaty  is  considered 
a  treaty  plus  aggression,  plus  the  losing  of  standing  that  comes  with 
failure. 

For  the  purpose  of  illustrating  this  better  I  will  set  up  a  purely 
hypothetical  case. 

In  the  capital  of  Government  X  is  the  ambassador  of  Government  A. 
A  has  for  some  time  occupied  itself  with  the  thought  of  forming  an 
alliance  with  X  for  the  purpose  of  meeting  a  situation  created  by  Govern- 
ment Z.  That  situation  may  be  one  that  calls  for  defensive  measures 
or  it  may  be  one  that  spells  aggression.  A  may  need  more  room,  more 
markets,  more  raw  material,  an  outlet  to  the  sea,  a  share  in  a  "zone  of 
interest,"  or  any  of  the  things  a  nation  may  actually  need  or  merely  imagine 
as  necessary.  Z,  however,  is  too  strong  to  be  attacked  without  assistance, 
and  A,  therefore,  decides  that  X  must  be  inveigled  into  giving  it.  Or 
it  may  be  that  the  ambitions  of  Z  can  be  curbed  only  in  this  manner. 

Government  X  may  have  its  own  cares  and  obligations  just  then  and 
careful  sounding  has  established  that  for  the  time  being,  at  any  rate — 
governments  never  turn  down  definitely  such  overtures — it  cannot  en- 
tangle itself.  Government  A,  however,  sees  in  X  the  only  possible,  or 
maybe,  logical  ally,  and  instructs  its  ambassador  to  bring  about  the  de- 
sired alliance  by  any  means. 

It  is  highly  probable  that  the  first  diplomatist  of  ^  who  attacks  the 
problem  is  instructed  to  limit  his  efforts  of  a  direct  nature  to  a  better 
understanding  between  the  two  governments  and  nations.     With  that  in 


A  HYPOTHETICAL  DEMONSTRATION  OF  DIPLOMACY  25 

view  the  ambassador  of  X  in  the  capital  of  A  will  be  taken  in  hand  and 
made  to  feel  that  he  is  quite  the  best  diplomatist  there  ever  was. 

An  entente  cordiale  being  established,  A  sends  to  the  capital  of  Z 
an  ambassador  known  to  possess  the  special  ability  required  by  the  con- 
ditions existing.  At  first  nothing  unusual  happens,  of  course.  The  new 
ambassador  of  A  goes  out  of  his  way  to  show  that  he  cares  more  for 
social  prominence  and  favors  than  he  does  for  professional  prestige, 
keeping  meanwhile  his  eyes  on  the  objective  that  is  his. 

After  a  while,  and  at  the  psychological  moment,  rumors  about  Gov- 
ernment Z  begin  to  float  about  the  capital.  They  are  not  especially  edi- 
fying to  the  Government  X,  and  its  foreign  office  honestly  doubts  them. 
The  ambassador  of  X  at  the  capital  of  Z,  however,  is  instructed  by  means 
of  a  cypher  dispatch  to  be  on  the  lookout  for  anything  that  might  in  any 
manner  shed  some  light  on  the  report  that,  let  us  say,  Government  Z 
was  anxious  to  reach  a  better  understanding  with  Government  Y,  known 
already  to  be  not  especially  friendly  to  Government  X. 

The  ambassador  of  Government  X,  being  in  all  matters  concerning 
his  duties  a  conscientious  man,  thinks  the  thing  over  and  discovers  that 
some  of  the  happenings  and  rumors  that  have  come  to  his  attention 
recently  are  now  better  understood.  He  knows  that  there  is  as  yet  no 
alliance  between  Z  and  Y,  but  may  remember  that  only  last  week  the 
foreign  minister  of  Z  was  unusually  cordial  to  the  ambassador  of  Y, 
going  perhaps  so  far  as  to  make  the  audience  unduly  long  at  the  expense 
of  X,  who  arrived  after  ambassador  Y. 

But  ambassador  X,  in  order  to  demonstrate  that  such  a  thing  could 
not  escape  his  notice,  informs  his  Foreign  Office  that,  while  there  is 
reason  to  believe  that  Government  Y  has  shown  some  uncalled-for  friend- 
liness to  the  Government  Z,  there  is  as  yet  no  ground  for  the  conclusion 
that  an  alliance  will  be  formed.  No  alliance  has  been  effected  so  far,  of 
course,  and  the  ambassador  will  continue  to  watch  developments  with  the 
care  he  has  given  the  matter  ever  since  the  first  signs  of  a  desire  for  a 
rapprochement  on  the  part  of  Y  with  Government  Z  came  to  his  attention. 
He  gives  the  assurance  that  as  yet  nothing  has  occurred  that  would  have 
justified  him  to  make  a  report. 

The  Foreign  Office  of  X  is  not  wholly  satisfied  with  this  report, 
but  waits  until  it  has  heard  from  its  ambassador  in  the  capital  of  Y. 
That  personage  may  be  frank  enough  to  say  that  nothing  has  been  heard 
at  his  post  of  such  endeavor  on  the  part  of  Government  Y,  which  would 
be  natural  enough  since  the  petitioner  would  be  obliged  to  make  his 
presentations  at  the  capital  of  Z  through  its  ambassador. 

But  this  diplomatist  also  will  have  grown  at  least  a  little  suspicious, 
and,  together  with  his  confrere  at  the  capital  of  Z,  he  will  begin  to  watch 


26  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

for  evidence  showing  that  a  rapprochement  between  Governments  Z. 
and  Y  is  fait  accompli.  When  next  the  minister  of  foreign  affairs  of  Z 
or  Y  has  occasion,  at  a  banquet,  let  us  assume,  to  use  the  usual  formula  in 
referring  to  the  relations  between  the  two  countries  as  especially  good, 
the  harm  is  done.  Though  the  foreign  office  of  X  may  know  perfectly 
well  that  no  secret  treaty  of  alliance  has  been  made,  as  it  will  know  if  it 
be  worth  its  salt,  press  and  public  of  X  will  look  upon  the  situation  as 
grave.  A  treaty  of  alliance  against  X  is  said  to  exist  and  after  that 
Government  A  will  not  have  to  wait  so  very  long  before  X  is  willing 
to  make  a  "similar"  treaty,  this  time  a  real  one.     War  is  the  next  step. 

It  would  serve  no  purpose  whatsoever  did  Government  Z  and  Y 
protest  just  before  the  break  that  there  was  no  such  alliance  between  them. 
Such  a  statement  would  be  looked  upon  as  another  violation  of  confidence 
and  a  further  endangering  of  the  world's  peace,  so  far  as  the  combined 
public  opinion  in  the  countries  of  A  and  X  is  concerned.  To  the  Govern- 
ment X  such  a  protest  would  seem  a  sparring  for  time  in  order  that  Z 
and  Y  might  select  a  better  moment  for  the  attack,  while  Government  A 
would  forget  for  good  and  always  what  its  own  share  in  the  matter 
was. 

Diplomacy  in  such  instances  knows  but  one  rule  and  guide: 

''Qui  s  excuse,  s'accuse." 


Ill 
THE  TRIPLE  ALUANCE 

THE  utter  debacle  of  the  mad  military  expedition  into  Russia  in 
1812  and  the  resulting  rising  in  Prussia  in  the  following  year  set 
the  star  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  Among  the  very  ashes  of  France's 
dream  of  liberty,  which  in  the  hands  of  the  Corsican  opportunist  had 
become  the  instrument  of  wildcat  imperialism,  was  formed  in  September, 
1815,  by  Alexander  I,  of  Russia;  Francis  I,  of  Austria,  and  Frederik 
William  III,  of  Prussia,  an  agreement  known  as  the  Holy  Alliance. 
Reaction  thus  followed  Radicalism.  The  pendulum  swung  once  more 
from  one  extreme  to  the  other,  as  it  has  the  habit  of  doing. 

Ostensibly  the  league  was  formed  for  the  purpose  of  preserving  in 
Europe  "peace,  justice  and  religion,"  all  three  of  which  had  been  endangered 
by  the  French,  as  it  was  seen  at  the  time.  Great  Britain  did  not  join 
the  pact,  because,  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon,  she  was  content  with  letting 
the  Continent  attend  to  its  own  affairs.  So  long  as  her  shores  and  her 
colonies  were  secure,  European  situations  did  not  greatly  interest  her 
statesmen  nor  worry  her  public.  The  Holy  Alliance  was  later  joined  by 
all  the  sovereigns  on  the  Continent,  with  the  exception  of  the  Pope,  who 
seems  to  have  realized,  as  did  Pope  Leo  X  in  1519  in  connection  with 
a  similar  pact,  that  the  protection  of  religion  by  a  combination  of  monarchs 
and  their  governments  was  not  to  the  best  interests  of  the  Church.  The 
Catholics  of  France  had  to  be  won  back,  moreover,  and  were  willing  to 
return  to  the  flock,  now  that  the  Reign  of  Reason  was  over — now  that 
Reason  had  shown  herself  rather  incompetent  in  dealing  with  matters 
highly  abstract.  There  was  nothing  to  be  gained,  therefore,  by  the  Holy 
See  in  joining  an  alliance  that  was  unnatural  enough  despite  its  quite 
natural  composition.  To  the  men  in  the  Vatican,  whatever  their  faults, 
must  be  left  the  recognition  that  they  have  been  fine  students  of  human 
nature.  The  limits  of  the  feasible  have  ever  been  clear  to  them,  and 
so  it  came  that  the  papacy  did  not  join  the  Holy  Alliance,  despite  the 
fact  that  Austria  always  had  been  far  more  the  daughter  of  the  Church 
than  was  France. 

This  "League  of  Nations,"  like  its  forerunner,  the  League  of  1518-19, 
did  not  endure  for  long.  In  1830  it  was  dead.  The  league  started  with 
an  act  of  violence  and  gross  injustice.    The  monarchs  of  Russia,  Austria 

27 


28  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

and  Prussia  divided  Poland  once  more — in  the  interest  of  world  peace, 
of  course;  actually  because  they  coveted  the  territory.  At  the  Congress 
of  Vienna  Metternich  had  an  able  opponent  in  the  person  of  Talleyrand, 
but  the  fact  is  that  the  former  had  force  with  him,  and  force  has  always 
been  the  best  argument  at  the  peace  table.  To  plead  morality  is  well 
enough,  but  it  is  the  number  of  battalions  which  shapes  the  provisions 
of  the  treaty. 

In  the  same  year  the  Orleanists  reconverted  France  into  a  monarchy, 
and  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  liberal  institutions  in  Europe  were  to  be 
banished  again.  But  the  reaction  that  was  setting  in  was  due  to  popular 
disapproval  of  tyranny  by  the  masses.  There  have  always  been  some 
who  would  prefer  government  by  a  single  despot  to  government  by  a 
million  tyrants,  as  a  people  misled  by  the  demagogue  is  only  too  prone 
to  be. 

But  common  sense  was  far  better  in  the  saddle  than  the  reactionaries 
believed.  The  revolutionary  wave  that  swept  over  Europe  in  the  forties 
wrung  concessions  from  many  a  government,  induced  even  the  Prussian 
king  to  grant  to  the  people  a  somewhat  hamstrung  Constitution.  After 
all,  the  French  Revolution  had  made  the  world  a  little  better — would  have 
made  it  much  better  had  it  not  gone  to  such  terrible  extremes. 

The  revolution  in  France  of  1848  re-established  the  republic  for 
the  short  spell  of  four  years,  when  a  pseudo-Napoleon  came  to  the  throne. 
It  seemed  that  the  several  experiments  with  republicanism  made  in  Europe 
up  to  that  time  did  not  meet  the  popular  view,  and  for  the  next  eighteen 
years  only  Switzerland,  and  if  San  Marino  and  Andorra  count  in  such 
matters,  they  also,  continued  a  form  of  government  well  suited,  apparently, 
to  their  needs.  The  remainder  of  Europe  fell  back  to  the  "divine-right" 
system  of  government. 

For  a  time  Emperor  Alexander  II,  of  Russia,  was  by  far  the  most 
liberal  monarch  in  Europe.  The  Prussian  kings  and  the  other  German 
overlords  regretted  what  rights  and  guarantees  they  had  given  their  people 
in  the  "Forties."  In  Hungary  the  Magyar  class,  ably  supported  from 
Vienna,  worked  hard  to  return  to  feudalism  and,  in  a  measure,  succeeded. 
In  Italy,  on  the  other  hand,  men  were  at  work  "redeeming"  the  country, 
politically  only,  to  be  sure,  but  not  without  bettering  the  lot  of  the  people 
so  freed.  A  period  was  set  these  socio-economic  and  socio-political  ups 
and  downs  by  the  raid  of  Prussia  and  Austria  upon  Denmark  in  1864, 
their  quarrel  over  the  spoils  and  other  differences  in  1866,  the  formation 
of  the  North  German  Union,  and  the  war  of  a  united  Germany,  under 
Prussian  leadership,  with  France,  1870-1871. 

Up  to  the  attack  by  Prussia  and  Austria  on  Denmark  in  1864  the 
political  affairs  of  the  continent  of  Europe  had  been  rather  chaotic,  and 


I 


THE  TRIPLE  ALLIANCE  29 

the  landhunger  of  three  of  the  leading  powers  having  been  appeased  by 
the  partition  of  Poland,  peace  for  the  time  being  was  rather  secure.  The 
density  of  populations,  moreover,  was  not  great,  and  industry  had  not 
yet  gone  to  mass  production,  so  that  there  was  no  necessity  of  a  wild 
scramble  for  markets.  Thus  it  came  about  that  for  a  while  the  smaller 
states  were  assured  of  their  tomorrow. 

But  a  cloud  appeared  on  the  horizon  when  Prussia,  by  means  of  the 
gradual  extension  of  the  Zollverein,  was  slowly  making  herself  the  head  of 
an  economic  and,  to  some  extent,  political  federation  that  needed  but  the 
touch  of  a  Bismarck  to  act  as  an  entity,  as  it  did  when  war  broke  out 
between  Prussia  and  France.  French  statesmen  had  watched  with  keen 
interest  and  great  anxiety  the  gradual  congealment  into  a  formidable  unit 
of  the  formerly  disrupted  neighbors  in  the  East.  The  fact  that  a  highly 
efficient  Prussia  was  at  the  head  of  the  combination,  a  Prussia  that  had 
wiped  out  the  kingdom  of  Hanover,  the  Duchy  of  Brunswick  and  the  old 
Kurhessia,  and  which  was  now  supreme  on  the  Rhine,  did  not  in  any 
way  tend  to  allay  the  fears  of  the  French.  That  being  the  case,  a  very 
flimsy  pretext  was  used  by  the  French  government  to  bring  on  war  with 
Prussia.*  The  enterprise  ended  diastrously  for  France.  The  loss  of 
Alsace-Lorraine  and  five  billion  francs  indemnity  was  all  that  could  be 
shown  by  the  French  when  the  peace  treaty  of  Versailles  had  been  signed. 
On  the  other  hand,  France  was  once  more  a  republic.  Whether  or  no, 
from  the  viewpoint  of  national  biology,  that  was  a  benefit  only  the  future 
can  show. 

The  Three  Emperors'  Alliance  Superseded 

Germany  was  now  an  empire  once  more.  The  emperor  of  Austria 
dismissed  his  claims  to  the  German  imperial  crown  and  shortly  afterward 
became  a  constituent  of  the  Three  Emperors*  League,  of  which  Czar 
Alexander  III,  of  Russia;  Emperor  William  I,  of  Germany,  and  Emperor 
Francis  Joseph,  of  Austria-Hungary,  were  the  members. 

For  a  time  this  arrangement  seemed  to  suffice  to  preserve  the  balance 
of  power  in  Europe,  for  which  there  was  now  a  necessity.  It  seemed 
also  that  the  Three  Emperors'  League  would  for  many  years,  decades, 
perhaps,  remain  the  major  political  fact  in  Europe.  But  that  was  not 
to  be.  In  1884,  at  Skyernewice,  the  league  was  renewed  for  another  term 
of  three  years,  and  when  1887  came  around  it  was  found  that  the  league 
had  become  obsolete. 


*  "Napoleon  II  a  declare,  sans  rime  nt  raison,  la  guerra  aux  Russes,  aux  Autrichiens,  aux 
Mexicaines,  aux  Prussiens,  et  iinalement  il  nous  a  fait  enlever  I'Alsace  et  la  Lorraine,  sans 
Parler  des  milliards  xx  payer." — A  French  School  Book.  "^'Instruction  Civique." — Paul  Bert. 


30  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Two  factors  contributed  to  this: 

In  1882  there  had  been  made  between  Germany,  Austria-Hungary  and 
Italy  a  treaty,  which  later  became  known  as  the  Triple  Alliance.  That 
this  alliance  did  not  immediately  supercede  the  Three  Emperors'  League 
is  due  to  the  fact  that,  though  Austria-Hungary  and  Italy  had  fairly  well 
ironed  out  their  difficulties,  Italy  was  still  considered  an  unsichercr  Kan- 
tonist — uncertain  "customer" — by  the  statesmen  in  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary.  Nor  was  it  ever  clear  whether,  after  all,  the  military  power 
of  Italy  considered,  the  Italians  were  not  more  of  a  charge  than  a  help 
in  a  defensive  alliance.  The  attitude  assumed  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Great 
War  by  the  Italian  government  that  the  terms  of  this  treaty  did  not 
oblige  her  to  side  with  Austria-Hungary  on  the  ground  that  Austria- 
Hungary  had  attacked  instead  of  being  attacked,  while  Germany  adhered 
to  the  spirit  of  the  document,  seems  to  justify  the  fears  always  entertained 
by  a  large  number  of  German  and  Aiustro- Hungarian  statesmen,  which 
very  recently  indeed  had  been  voiced  frankly  by  Kiderlen  Waechter,  prede- 
cessor of  von  Jagow,  State  Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs. 

Russia  continued  a  member  of  the  Three  Emperors'  League  after 
the  making  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  as  has  been  shown.  She  could  well 
afford  to  do  that,  nor  was  her  prestige  impaired  by  not  being  a  member 
of  the  alliance.  The  agreements  she  made  with  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary,  through  the  person  of  the  czar,  bound  her  only  for  three  years 
at  a  time  and  left  her  hands  rather  free.  Again,  Russia  derived  certain 
benefits  from  being  a  member  of  the  Three  Emperors'  League.  She  was 
almost  constantly  at  odds  with  Great  Britain  in  regard  to  points  of 
unfriendly  contact  along  the  northern  boundaries  of  India.  Gradually  the 
sphere  of  influence  of  Russia  had  been  extended  southward.  A  dispute 
over  Afghanistan  in  1885  led  almost  to  war,  nor  had  the  affair  in  the 
Crimea  been  forgotten  yet. 

There  were  many  in  Russia  who  regarded  the  Three  Emperors* 
League  as  a  very  illiogical  combination.  Russia  was  hostile  to  Great 
Britain  and  never  went  out  of  her  way  to  let  this  be  forgotten.  Germany, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  strong  dynastic  ties  with  England,  and  a  little 
unpleasantness  at  the  time  of  the  annexation  of  Hanover  and  Brunswick 
overlooked,  the  Hohenzollerns  had  managed  to  get  along  very  well  with 
the  British  government  and  reigning  family.  The  consequence  of  this  was 
that  all  the  Russian  government  could  expect  to  find  in  Berlin,  despite 
the  Three  Emperors'  League,  was  good  advice  rather,  to  keep  the  peace, 
than  an  offer  to  go  to  war  for  the  further  aggrandizement,  eastward,  of 
the  Russian  empire.  Russia's  imperialists  were  not  looking  for  good  advice 
in  Berlin.  What  they  wanted  was  a  guarantee  from  the  Gerrrian  govern- 
ment to  actively  promote  Russian  interests  in  case  of  war  between  Russia 


THE  THREE  EMPEROR'S  ALLIANCE  SUPERCEDED      31 

and  Great  Britain.  This  guarantee  Bismarck  might  have  given,  but  Emperor 
William  H  never,  being  in  those  days  intensely  Anglophile.  This  is  one 
of  the  reasons  why  the  impetuous,  young  monarch  ''dropped  his  pilot."  It 
must  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  the  attitude  taken  by  William  II 
was  not  an  entirely  unreasonable  one.  Long  before  there  was  a  "German 
peril"  in  the  world  was  there  a  "Russian  peril"  in  Germany.  There  were 
about  160,000,000  Russians  of  all  sorts  to  68,000,000  Germans,  whose 
country  had  but  little  of  natural  wealth,  while  Russia's  resources  even  today 
have  been  hardly  tapped.  Out  of  these  conditions  grew  the  two  major  of 
Germany's  political  tendencies :  Orientation  toward  the  East,  or  orienta- 
tion toward  the  West.  The  latter  tendency  meant  assuming  a  hostile 
attitude  toward  Russia,  the  former  had  for  its  tangible  objective  an 
alliance  between  Germany  and  Russia,  which  alliance  would  have  been 
made  had  the  Berlin  government  been  ready  to  go  to  war  with  Great 
Britain  in  the  interest  of  Russia,  in  addition  to  placing  a  premium  on 
Pan-slavism  by  surrendering  to  Russia  the  Balkan  states  and  probably 
Austria-Hungary.  It  was  not  easy  to  determine  which  of  these  was  the 
lesser  of  two  evils.  Berlin  could  not  afford  to  affront  either  the  one  or 
the  other,  and  for  that  reason  did  its  best  to  be  on  good  terms  with 
both,  St.  Petersburg  and  London,  hoping  always,  it  seems,  that  the  parting 
of  the  ways  would  never  come. 

Czar  Alexander  III  was  sensible  enough  to  see  that  this  could  not  be 
otherwise,  and  his  friendship  continued  to  be  enjoyed  by  William  I  after 
the  league  was  a  thing  of  memory.  This  friendship  was  even  transferred 
to  William  II  and  lasted  until  the  death  of  the  czar  in  1894. 

Alexander  was  rather  reactionary  and  had  little  sympathy  with  repre- 
sentative and  popular  institutions.  Republics  were  his  bete  noire.  For 
this  reason  he  resisted  consistently  every  endeavor  to  have  Russia  attached 
to  France  with  a  treaty  of  alliance.  M.  de  Giers,  most  prominent  of 
his  foreign  ministers,  also  disliked  the  idea  of  seeing  the  autocracy  do 
teamwork  with  a  republic,  but  in  1893  was  obliged  to  enter  into  such  an 
alliance. 

Purpose  of  Franco-Russian   Alliance 

The  alliance  between  Russia  and  France  was  not  aimed  at  Germany, 
which  was  the  reason  why  Czar  Nicholas  and  Emperor  William  II  man- 
aged to  maintain  the  best  of  relations  and  even  enter  into  agreements 
against  others.  The  Franco-Russian  entente,  as  the  agreement  is  popu- 
larly known,  was  intended  to  be  a  curb  upon  Great  Britain.  It  was 
frankly  anti-British,  as  was  so  often  demonstrated  during  the  late  Boer 
War,  when  Great  Britain  had  hardly  a  friend  in  Europe,  Emperor  William 


32  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

excepted,  despite  the  impulsive  telegram  he  sent  to  President  Kruger  on 
the  occasion  of  the  Jamieson  Raid. 

Russia  had  many  grievances  against  Great  Britain,  or  thought  she  had, 
which  in  international  affairs  is  the  same  thing.  Her  animus  was  founded, 
however,  not  on  clashes  in  the  Far  East  and  India,  but  on  the  deter- 
mination of  Great  Britain  to  retain  the  Dardanelles  and  Bosphorus  in 
the  peculiar  status  they  had.  The  Russian  Black  Sea  fleet  was  prevented 
by  the  several  treaties  that  established  this  status,  and  later  by  what  was 
known  as  the  'Concert  of  Europe,"  which  in  matters  affecting  the  Near 
E^st  was  always  under  the  direction  of  Great  Britain,  from  entering  the 
straits  and  the  Mediterranean,  while  Russian  mercantile  shipping  was 
forever  at  the  mercy  of  the  fetwahs  of  the  Turkish  sultans,  who  could 
close  the  Bosphorus  and  Dardanelles  whenever  they  deemed  this  wise. 

Such  at  least  was  the  gravamen  Russian  statesmen  advanced.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  this  was  stating  but  half  of  the  case.  Long  before  the 
Byzantian  empire  passed  away,  in  860  and  again  in  1048,  of  our  era, 
Russian  fleets  had  attempted  to  "force"  the  Bosphorus  and  Dardanelles. 
Ever  since  then  it  had  been  the  dream  of  the  men  in  Moscow  and  St.  Peters- 
burg to  make  Constantinople  their  third  capital  and  the  Balkan  one  of 
their  provinces.  In  addition  to  being  a  tremendous  economic  and  political 
advantage,  that  plan,  if  carried  out,  would  have  united  the  Slavs  into  a 
single  nation,  and  what  was  of  greater  importance  even,  during  the  su- 
premacy of  the  clergy  in  Russia,  it  would  have  made  Constantinople  the 
seat  and  glory  of  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church.  When  Great  Britain 
refused  to  have  Russia  navigate  the  Bosphorus  and  Dardanelles  to  her 
heart's  content,  Russia  felt  how  bitterly  her  plan  of  expansion  southward 
was  being  opposed  by  the  British. 

The  French  also  had  reason  to  resent  the  pretensions  of  the  British 
about  the  time  the  treaty  was  made  with  Russia.  Quite  calmly  Great 
Britain  had  placed  herself  in  control  of  the  Suez  Canal  and  most  of 
Egypt,  to  mention  but  two  of  the  points  of  hostile  contact.  The  boun- 
daries of  the  British  and  French  empires  in  Africa  furnished  ample 
opportunity  for  more  friction,  the  Fashoda  Affair,  for  instance,  and 
France  saw  that  she  needed  an  ally  and  a  strong  one.  Relations  be- 
tween Germany  and  Great  Britain  continued  to  be  good,  and  complica- 
tions with  one  meant  an  invitation  to  the  other  to  strike,  as  the  French 
viewed  it. 

In  addition  there  was  the  Levant  and  its  many  problems  that  kept 
Russia  and  France  meeting  on  the  same  ground.  In  that  sphere  the  two 
had  much  in  common.  France  saw  in  the  Balkan,  though  much  more 
so  in  Asia  Minor,  good  markets  close  to  her  doors.  She  had  been  able 
to  meet  Italian  and  Austrian  competition.     Germany  had  as  yet  not 


PURPOSE  OF  FRANCO-RUSSIAN  ALLIANCE  33 

entered  this  market  very  strongly,  and  Great  Britain  seemed  content  with 
getting  all  the  railroad  concessions  the  Turks  had  to  give,  without  building 
any  of  the  lines,  which  was  not  necessary  since  railroad  concessions  in 
hand  are  out  of  reach  of  the  competitor  and  can  be  used  for  political 
purposes.  True  enough,  the  Turks  were  partial  to  the  French  and  favored 
them  in  many  ways.  They  were  also  ready  to  be  good  friends  with  the 
Russians.  But  it  was  British  anti-Russian  diplomacy  in  Pera  that  was 
successful  at  the  Sublime  Porte. 

Turkish  and  British  interests  happened  to  coincide  exactly  in  many 
respects.  The  principal  question  on  which  Turkish  policy,  such  as  it 
was,  and  British  policy  agreed  was  that  the  straits  of  the  Bosphorus  and 
Dardanelles  should  retain  the  status  given  them.  That  status  involved 
a  slight  infraction  of  Ottoman  sovereignty,  in  that  it  made  a  waterway, 
which  the  Turks  claimed  to  be  territorial,  the  subject  of  international 
agreement.  But  it  left  the  Turks  in  full  control  of  it,  pending  good 
behavior,  and  the  Turks,  by  that  time,  had  learned  that  it  was  not  well 
to  be  too  particular  in  matters  affecting  British  interests.  The  Ottoman 
government  could  have  never  held  for  long  the  straits,  if  not  internationally 
guaranteed  in  their  possession.  Both,  the  Ottoman  and  the  British  govern- 
ments had  to  fear  that  overnight  the  Russian  Black  Sea  fleet,  which  was 
largely  maintained  for  this  very  purpose,  would  swoop  upon  the  entrance 
to  the  Bosphorus,  force  entry,  take  Constantinople,  close  the  Dardanelles 
at  Sid-il-Bahr  and  explain  afterward,  as  is  done  in  such  cases. 

To  Turk  and  Britisher  alike  that  would  have  been  disastrous.  The 
Ottoman  capital  would  then  have  been  elsewhere  again,  probably  Brussa 
or  Eskishehir  in  Anatolia,  and  with  Russia  in  possession  of  the  Black 
Sea,  the  Bosphorus,  Sea  of  Marmora  and  the  Dardanelles,  British  control 
of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Suez  Canal  would  have  been  problematical, 
to  say  the  least.  That  much  Great  Britain  could  not  risk,  and  so  it  came 
that  the  Franco^Russian  entente  was  arrived  at  despite  the  dislike  of  a 
czar,  who  was  logical  enough  to  see  that  his  autocracy  could  not  very 
well  pair  itself  with  a  republic,  and  despite  the  liberals  of  France,  who, 
naturally,  stuck  up  their  noses  when  it  was  first  proposed  to  link  la 
republique  to  a  state  as  reactionary  as  Russia. 

Russia  and  Germany  G>ntinue  Friends 

Instead  of  drawing  asunder,  as  the  result  of  the  entente,  Russia  and 
Germany  became  more  attached  to  each  other  for  a  while.  In  at  least 
one  respect  had  William  II  heeded  the  advice  of  his  illustrious  grand- 
father. The  founder  of  the  German  empire  had  told  his  grandson  on 
his  deathbed  that  whatever  he  did  he  was  to  treat  with  consideration  and 


34  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

respect  Czar  Alexander.  William  II  seems  to  have  carried  this  out  to 
the  letter.  Alexander  was  the  only  man  before  whom  the  impetuous 
young  ruler  of  Prussia  and  Germany  was  ever  conscious  of  a  certain 
degree  of  that  inferiority  which  youth  will  feel  before  the  dignified  elder. 
There  were  two  other  persons  to  whom  William  brought  this  tribute :  Em- 
peror Francis  Joseph,  of  Austria,  and  Queen  Victoria.  While  William 
was  on  the  best  of  terms  with  Nicholas  of  Russia  the  restraint  alluded 
to  was  absent,  of  course.  The  two  men  were  of  about  the  same  age,  and, 
while  they  advised  one  another,  neither  was  able  to  permanently  influence 
his  fellow  sovereign,  a  condition  that  was  to  make  itself  felt  in  the  relations 
of  the  two  empires. 

The  elimination  of  Prince  Bismarck  had  left  William  not  only  a  free 
hand  in  German  internal  affairs — to  get  that  free  hand  the  emperor  dis- 
missed the  chancellor — but  it  also  started  Germany  on  a  dangerous  career 
in  foreign  politics.  There  is  no  doubt  that  William  was  actuated  by 
the  best  of  motives.  He  wanted  his  empire  to  grow  and  grow  rapidly. 
Bismarck  was  committed  to  slower  methods,  it  seems,  for  none  knew  better 
that  gradual  evolution  is  the  best  for  a  state,  especially  a  state  which  had 
grown  into  an  empire  overnight  from  a  conglomerate  of  states  and  prin- 
cipalities which  none  had  feared  in  the  past  for  the  reason  that  their  own 
difficulties  and  differences,  and  the  fancied  divergences  of  interest,  had 
made  them  a  danger  more  to  one  another  than  to  their  foreign  neighbors. 
The  death  of  Czar  Alexander  took  from  William  a  curb — ^the  last  one — 
which  Germany  could  ill  afford  to  lose.  With  this  restraint  gone,  the 
German  emperor  began  to  enwallow  his  people,  entirely  by  utterances 
that  were  indiscreet  and  injudicious,  in  a  slough  of  international  com- 
plications that  led  from  one  crisis  to  another. 

Czar  Nicholas  had  taken  over  from  his  father,  as  foreign  minister, 
M.  de  Giers,  a  Russian  statesman  and  diplomatist  of  what  was  then 
known  as  the  Old  School.  De  Giers  was  decidedly  pro-German  and  anti- 
British,  a  great  admirer  of  Bismarck  and  a  stout  adherent  of  the  principle 
of  the  Three  Emperors'  League.  He  had  finally  entered  the  Franco- 
Russian  pact,  but  only  against  Great  Britain.  He  knew,  of  course,  that 
the  French  hoped  to  kill  two  flies  with  this  stone,  Germany  and  the  British 
Empire,  but  had  no  reason  to  believe,  at  that  time,  that  the  entente  would 
in  the  end  find  the  application  it  had.  In  conformity  with  his  policy,  he 
promoted  as  much  as  possible  the  marriage  of  Nicholas  to  Princess  Alice 
of  Hesse-Darmstadt,  who,  though  the  daughter  of  a  princess-royal  of 
Great  Britain  and  granddaughter  of  Queen  Victoria,  was  German  enough 
to  take  care  for  a  time  of  German  interests  at  the  court  of  St.  Petersburg. 

M.  de  Giers  was  succeeded  as  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs  by 
Prince  Lobanoff,  a  man  whose  greatest  achievement  has  been  that  he 


RUSSIA  AND  GERMANY  CONTINUE  FRIENDS  35 

ran  away  with  the  wife  of  a  secretary  of  the  French  embassy  at  Vienna. 
Lobanoff  was  a  Germanophobe  and  an  intriguant  of  the  most  vicious  type. 
He  opposed  the  match  between  Nicholas  and  AHce  to  the  best  of  his  abihty, 
but  the  de  Giers  element  in  the  Russian  capital,  and  its  counterpart  in 
Germany,  succeeded  in  their  plan,  all  the  easier  since  there  was  a  great 
deal  of  natural  attachment  between  the  two. 

Europe's  Three  Political  Camps 

For  several  years  after  that  Europe  was  divided  into  three  political 
camps.  The  Triple  Alliance,  which,  despite  its  weak  elements — the  ineffi- 
ciency of  Austria-Hungary  and  the  untrustworthiness  of  Italy — made  the 
three  component  states  sufficiently  secure  against  attack;  the  Franco- 
Russian  alliance,  directed  against  Great  Britain,  so  far  as  Russia  was 
concerned,  and  against  Great  Britain  and  Germany  in  the  case  of  France, 
and,  finally.  Great  Britain  herself,  constituting  then  the  object  of  an 
isolation  policy,  unintentional  so  far  as  the  Triple  Alliance  was  concerned, 
intentional  in  case  of  the  Dual  Alliance  of  France  and  Russia.  The  result 
of  this  was  that  Great  Britain  came  to  adhere  more  and  more  to  the 
policies  taught  her  by  her  own  history  and  geographical  location,  of  which 
the  two-power  standard  of  her  naval  program  was  the  most  important. 

It  had  been  shown  that  from  the  Triple  Alliance  Great  Britain  had 
nothing  to  fear.  The  governments  forming  it  had  been  uniformly  friendly 
to  Great  Britain  in  the  past.  England  had  had  no  serious  difficulties 
with  any  of  the  German  states.  Her  relations  with  Austria-Hungary  had 
been  the  best  for  generations,  and  Italy  was  not  a  serious  factor  in  world 
politics  at  that  time. 

For  all  that  the  Triple  Alliance  left  Great  Britain  a  little  in  the 
cold,  as  it  were.  The  interests  of  an  allied  group  multiply  with  the 
cube  of  the  number  of  allies,  and  to  feel  that  one  has  the  power  of  an 
alliance  to  back  up  one's  plans  and  ambitions  is  not  calculated  to  further 
the  interests,  nor  promote  the  good  feeling,  of  a  state  which  stands  alone, 
and  has,  in  addition,  a  pact  between  two  strong  states  directed  against  it. 
The  Dual  Alliance  was  frankly  hostile  to  Great  Britain,  and  there  is  no 
telling  what  would  have  happened  had  not  William  II  and  Francis  Joseph 
held  Queen  Victoria  in  too  high  an  esteem  to  permit  them  to  view  vvith 
complacency  any  attempt  to  strike  at  the  British  when  the  moment  was 
ripe — during  the  late  Boer  War,  for  instance,  when  overtures  to  that 
effect  were  actually  made  at  Berlin  and  Vienna. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  evidence  to  prove  that  Berlin  and  Vienna 
did  not  look  upon  the  Triple  Alliance  as  the  means  of  aggression  in 
those  days.  Italy  continued  to  limp  in  loyalty  and  military  strength. 
William  overlooked  no  opportunity  to  make  the  French  feel  that  better 


36  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

relations  between  Germany  and  France  were  not  as  impossible  as  the 
French  chauvinists  thought.  To  be  sure,  there  was  always  an  element 
of  condescension  in  these  efforts,  as  the  French  viewed  it.  But  that  may 
have  been  due  to  the  fact  that  the  people  of  France  could  not  but  look 
upon  the  Germans  as  conquerors,  who  had  taken  from  them  two  provinces 
and  five  billion  francs,  in  addition  to  humbling  la  grande  nation  on  the 
battlefield.  At  any  rate  William  was  never  so  proud  in  his  life  as 
when  the  French  government  consented  to  place  under  the  command 
of  a  German  general.  Count  von  Waldersee,  the  military  contingent  it 
contributed  to  the  expedition  against  the  Boxers. 

It  would  seem  that  in  those  days  Germany  had  the  last  of  her  good 
statesmen.  Count  Caprivi  was  a  great  success  as  chancellor,  despite  the 
criticism  that  was  heaped  upon  him.  Under  him  Germany  had  more 
friends  than  she  had  ever  had  before  and  has  had  since.  Prince  Hohen- 
lohe,  married  to  a  member  of  one  of  the  most  influential  families  in 
Russia,  the  Wittgensteins,  bettered  relations  with  that  country  wonder- 
fully, and  even  Prince  von  Buelow  had  a  modest  measure  of  success. 

German  diplomacy  was  rather  successful  then — which  diplomacy  easily 
is  when  the  government  represented  has  friends.  Good  or  bad  diplomacy 
is  not  by  any  means  so  much  a  question  of  personnel  as  is  generally 
believed.  Against  antipathy  for  his  government  and  state  the  best  diplo- 
matist is  absolutely  powerless. 

A  good  illustration  of  this  is  had  in  the  case  of  Baron  Marschall  von 
Bieberstein,  a  man  looked  upon  by  many  Germans  as  the  best  diplomatist 
they  had  had  in  generations.  Baron  Marschall  has  to  his  credit  the  fact 
that  he  was  the  only  German  diplomatist  who  managed  to  get  along  with 
the  French  and  was  held  in  high  esteem  by  them.  It  was  he  who  pro- 
moted the  rapprochement  between  Turkey  and  Germany,  did  the  ground- 
work for  the  Bagdad  railroad  and  brought  the  German  military  mission 
imder  von  der  Goltz  Pasha  to  Constantinople.  Later  he  was  sent  to 
London,  where  he  died — all  too  soon.  The  interesting  feature  of  the 
case  is  that  Baron  Marschall  was  a  typical  "Prussian" — a  man  of  brusk 
manners,  but  withal  sincere  and  forceful  of  character.  Though  his  suc- 
cesses in  Constantinople  had  not  left  British  influence  in  Turkey  better 
off,  he  was  well  received  in  London  and  enjoyed  not  only  the  esteem  but 
also  the  confidence  of  the  British  government. 

The  Triple  Entente  Puts  in  Appearance 

The  diplomacy  involved  in  the  conditions  here  outlined  was  on  the 
whole  very  simple.  The  situation  in  Europe  called  for  direct  action 
in  most  cases.  Intrigue  could  accomplish  nothing  which  a  reasonable 
modicum  of  frankness  did  not  achieve.     Between  Berlin,  Vienna  and 


THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE  PUTS  IN  APPEARANCE         37 

Rome  there  were  no  issues  that  called  for  diplomacy,  giving  the  word 
its  sinister  meaning,  nor  were  these  capitals  interested  in  creating  situa- 
tions elsewhere.  St.  Petersburg  had  made  up  its  mind  to  reap  the  fruits 
of  the  Franco-Russian  pact,  but  did  not  rely  solely  upon  that  agreement, 
taking  good  care  to  have  Germany  as  a  potential  ally,  through  the 
medium  of  the  two  emperors.  Paris,  however,  had  to  continue  cultivating 
Russian  friendship,  largely  by  means  of  loans,  and  London  for  the 
time  being  relied  on  the  strength  of  the  British  empire  and  the  great 
probability  that  her  statesmen  and  diplomatists  could  easily  find  a  place 
in  either  of  the  two  camps  in  case  of  trouble.  Moreover,  there  was  Britain's 
mighty  fleet  of  war,  and,  with  the  exception  of  the  Grover  Cleveland 
administration,  the  government  of  the  United  States  could  be  considered 
a  potential  ally,  the  British  government  having  seen  to  it  that  the  stage 
was  set  and  the  lines  written  for  the  necessary  blood-is-thicker-than-water 
comedy.  Mr.  Hay,  as  Secretary  of  State,  and  Lord  Pouncefote  as  British 
ambassador  at  Washington  were  the  first  high  contracting  parties  in  the 
"gentlemen's  agreement"  made. 

Neither  the  open  hostility  of  the  Russian  government  nor  the  con- 
cealed animus  of  the  French  perturbed  the  British.  The  fulsome  exuber- 
ancy which  characterized  expression  in  the  French  press  at  the  time 
the  czar  and  czarina  visited  Paris  left  the  British  public  calm.  Though 
every  phrase  had  been  whittled  for  British  consumption,  the  men  in 
London  also  saw  that  some  of  the  veiled  threats  between  sentences  were 
meant  for  Germany.  For  the  time  being,  then,  the  Franco-Russian  alliance 
bad  no  definite  direction,  so  that  it  would  always  be  possible  to  still 
shape  its  final  course.  Ultimately  the  prime  motive  of  the  pact  was 
overlooked  and  Great  Britain  made  the  arrangement  serve  her  own 
purpose. 

That  was  statesmanship  of  the  highest  order.  But  it  is  possible  that 
it  was  more  the  general  situation  throughout  Europe  than  lack  of  ability 
that  prevented  the  leaders  in  government  elsewhere  from  being  statesmen 
instead  of  mere  politicians. 

The  statesman  is  a  politician  who  can  foresee  what  an  act  of  his  will 
result  in,  not  only  tomorrow,  but  twenty  years  hence,  while  the  politician 
is  a  statesman  who  cannot  do  that.  The  former  must  have  not  only 
ability,  but  opportunity  as  well.  He  must  have  space  in  which  to  move, 
in  which  to  exercise  his  imagination  and  energy,  and  such  space  was  not 
to  be  found  on  the  continent  of  Europe  at  the  end  of  the  first  decade 
of   the  Twentieth   Century. 

So  far  as  the  Central  Powers  were  concerned  the  Triple  Alliance, 
defective  as  it  was,  was  the  full  measure  of  success  attainable  in  a  world 
where  "Balance  of  Power"  was  become  a  fetich  and  the  only  antidote 


38  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

for  war.  A  rapprochement  with  the  only  available  state,  the  Ottoman 
empire,  was  the  only  political  expansion  now  possible.  This  was  effected 
by  Gemiany,  despite  the  fact  that  Austria-Hungary,  her  ally,  was  forever 
ready  to  shear  the  Turk  of  territory.  This  was  no  mean  success  of 
German  diplomacy,  considering  that  Great  Britain  had  in  the  past  done 
more  than  any  other  power  to  keep  the  Sick  Man  of  Europe  alive. 
At  the  same  time  it  marked  the  end  of  a  cycle  in  national  and  international 
life. 

The  opportunity  for  further  development  was  rather  better  in  case 
of  the  Franco-Russian  alliance.  While  Great  Britain  seemed  hardly 
suited  to  belong  to  that  combination,  as  her  moralists  never  tired  of  pointing 
out,  there  were  several  reasons  why  in  the  end  she  would  find  it  profitable 
to  join  it,  despite  the  fact  that  its  first  purpose  had  been  to  put  an  end  to 
British  hegemony. 

It  is  really  very  hard  to  say  whether  this  twist  in  international  affairs 
argues  for  the  great  ability  of  the  British  statesmen  or  the  great  stupidity 
of  all  others.  Be  that  as  it  may  the  men  in  Berlin  lacked  all  the  means, 
even  had  they  had  the  ability,  to  undo  what  so  strange  a  turn  in  the  in- 
ternational relations  of  Europe  had  brought  about.  It  would  be  highly 
unfair  to  blame  them  for  anything  in  connection  with  this  fait  accompli. 
Small,  indeed,  is  the  number  of  men  in  political  history  who  would  have 
been  able  to  meet  such  a  situation  along  lines  of  aggression,  but  one  must 
wonder  why  the  German  government  did  not  become  more  wary  and  more 
diplomatic. 


IV 

THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE 

INTERNATIONAL  affairs,  like  the  conditions  affecting  the  lesser 
groups  of  man,  overlap  one  another.  They  did  this  in  the  instance 
of  the  arrangement  later  known  as  the  Triple  Entente,  and  the 
subject  treated  in  the  preceding  chapter,  the  Triple  Alliance. 

The  Franco-Russian  pact  was  directed  primarily  against  Great  Britain 
and  secondarily,  by  France  at  any  rate,  against  Germany  and  Great 
Britain.  Great  Britain  was  virtually  isolated  and  considered  herself  totally 
so  when  the  expansionists  of  Germany  undertook  to  build  a  navy  com- 
mensurate, at  first,  as  was  said,  with  the  growth  of  the  German  merchant 
marine,  agreeable  later,  as  was  announced,  to  the  dignity  of  the  new 
German  empire.  iSuch  was  the  compound  program  of  the  German  Plot- 
ienverein,  which  in  Emperor  William  had  so  ardent  a  spokesman  and 
promoter.  That  tendency  was  considered  a  danger  by  Great  Britain, 
and  properly  so.  Great  Britain  had  never  raised  an  objection  against  the 
armament  on  land  which  Germany  maintained;  with  preparation  on  sea 
it  was  a  different  matter. 

Thus  "the  German  peril"  came. 

A  strong  German  army  could  be  useful  to  Great  Britain  against 
Russia  and  France,  whose  alliance  was  an  argument  in  that  direction, 
and  no  mean  one.  A  strong  German  fleet,  on  the  other  hand,  might  be 
turned  against  Great  Britain  herself,  and  there  were  not  wanting  in 
Germany  the  indiscreet  wielders  of  speech  and  pen  who  reminded  the 
British  public  of  this.  The  emperor,  in  fact,  was  one  of  the  worst 
offenders.  There  were  times  when  he  could  not  contain  his  great  dislike 
for  his  uncle,  later  King  Edward  VII,  and  there  is  ample  proof  to  show 
that  most  of  the  vehement  utterances  William  made  were  directed  at 
that  relative  rather  than  at  Great  Britain.  The  chancellors  of  William  II 
had  a  rather  bad  time  of  it,  trying  to  place  a  curb  on  the  imperial 
tongue.  They  were  men  who  realized  that  one  of  these  days  such 
intemperance  would  have  results  detrimental  to  the  nation.  Unfortunately, 
they  never  succeeded  for  long  holding  their  master  in  check,  and  in  the 
end  exactly  that  happened  what  they  feared  would  happen. 

There  are  two  sides  to  every  question,  and  the  claim  of  Great  Britain, 
that  she  was  fully  justified  in  maintaining  a  naval   establishment  able 

39 


40  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

to  cope  with  a  combination  of  the  two  foreign  war  fleets  next  in  strength 
to  her  own,  should  be  viewed  with  more  sympathy  than  at  first  it  would 
seem  to  deserve. 

Great  Britain  depended  as  much  upon  her  navy  as  Germany  depended 
upon  her  army.  On  that  point,  moreover,  the  statesmen  in  Berlin  and 
London  had  agreed  long  ago.  But  it  is  a  characteristic  of  navies  that  they 
can  be  used  for  a  variety  of  purposes.  An  army  is  quite  a  negligible 
factor  in  colonial  enterprises  so  long  as  its  line  of  communication  with 
the  home  country  is  not  protected  by  a  strong  navy.  Thus,  in  colonial 
expansion  overseas,  a  good  navy  is  the  prime  prerequisite  so  long  as  inter- 
ference with  this  policy  must  be  taken  into  account.  The  lack  of  such 
a  navy  makes  one's  colonial  enterprises  dependent  upon  the  good  will 
of  the  nation  that  has  such  an  arm.  The  best  army  becomes  useless  for 
expeditionary  purposes  away  from  home  when  its  transit  on  the  seas 
can  be  threatened,  or  when,  transit  having  been  accomplished,  its  supplies 
can  be  cut  off. 

A  strong  navy  also  is  able  to  protect  one's  merchant  shipping.  An 
army  is  a  nonentity  in  that  respect,  no  matter  how  strong  and  eflficient. 

Germany  had  brought  into  being  a  great  merchant  marine,  and  had 
in  the  course  of  time,  and  somewhat  by  the  grace  of  Great  Britain,  founded 
a  colonial  empire  of  promise,  the  slow  development  of  which  had  its 
causes  in  the  fact  that  the  Germans  were  not  colonizers  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  British  are  this.  Instead  of  getting  the  natives  to  do  their 
best  under  conditions  as  yet  unsuited  for  the  White  Man,  they  had  at- 
tempted to  do  everything  themselves  in  the  manner  which  has  become 
known  as  "Potsdam."  Too  much  thoroughness  was  expended  on  trifles, 
and  the  major  issues  were  never  grasped.  The  result  of  this  was  that 
the  colonial  possessions  of  Germany  were  a  charge  when  they  might  have 
been  a  factor  of  at  least  economic  strength. 

These  things  were  known  to  the  German  colonial  enthusiasts  merely 
by  their  effect,  not  by  their  causes.  That  the  colonies  did  not  pay  was 
thought  due  to  inherent  conditions.  The  colonies  were  no  good,  and  a 
place  in  the  sun  had  to  be  sought  elsewhere,  therefore.  To  get  that  place 
in  the  sun  a  large  navy  was  thought  necessary,  as  indeed  it  was,  taking 
the  strictly  German  view  of  it. 

Against  the  German  naval  program.  Great  Britain  advanced  a  certain 
number  of  arguments,  all  of  them  good  for  Great  Britain,  naturally, 
yet  none  of  them  really  bad  for  the  Germans.  When  the  Germans  argued 
that  their  merchant  marine  needed  protection,  and  that  its  growth  was 
retarded  by  the  lack  of  a  strong  navy,  the  British  pointed  to  the  fact 
that  the  Dutch  and  Norwegian  merchant  marines  were  greater  in  pro- 
portion than  the  German,  and  that  in  their  case  the  absence  of  a  strong 


THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE  41 

navy  had  been  no  handicap.  To  the  contention  that  Germany  needed 
a  strong  navy  for  the  good  of  her  colonies,  the  British  were  in  the 
habit  of  replying  that  the  Dutch  colonial  empire,  much  more  valuable 
than  the  German,  had  continued  in  spite  of  having  no  such  protection. 

The  Kleindeutschen  element — Little^Germans — were  satisfied  with 
that  presentation  of  the  case.  Not  so  the  Alldeutschen — men  who  pro- 
moted, supported  and  guided  the  navy  and  colonies  associations. 

The  latter  had  a  telling  argument  on  their  side.  What  the  British 
politicians  said  was  all  very  well.  It  was  quite  possible  that  for  the  time 
being  Great  Britain  would  not  molest  the  German  merchant  marine  and 
would  not  take  the  German  colonies,  but  what  guarantee  was  there  that 
Great  Britain  might  not  do  that  tomorrow? 

It  is  the  habit  of  the  German  mind  to  do  things  for  keeps.  The 
word  forever  has  a  real  meaning  to  the  average  German.  He  is  ever 
concerned  with  the  future,  without  realizing  that  a  statesman's  forever  is 
a  mockery.  Seeing  that  none  are  better  students  of  history  than  these 
very  same  people  one  must  wonder  that  the  duration  of  things  and  con- 
ditions has  never  become  clearer  to  them.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  fact  is 
that  the  navy  and  colony  leagues  saw  things  only  from  that  angle. 

The  Case  of  the  Two-Power  Standard 

But  Germany  also  had  a  caste  which  for  its  opposition  to  the  British 
two-power  standard  did  not  even  have  that  justification.  It  was  the  con- 
tention of  this  class  that  acquiescence  into  this  British  policy  meant  a 
woeful  surrender  of  German  sovereignty.  Any  measure  by  a  foreign 
government  which  at  all  influenced  a  German  measure  of  the  same  general 
category  was  to  this  element  an  infraction  of  sovereignty;  consent  to  it 
was  adjudged  supineness  and  even  treason.  If  Germany  wanted  to  build 
a  large  navy  it  was  entirely  a  German  matter  and  the  right  of  Germany 
to  do  so.  Did  not  Great  Britain  do  the  same  thing?  If  Great  Britain 
wanted  to  increase  her  army  she  had  a  right  to  do  that  without  asking. 

All  this  was  well  only  from  the  position  of  the  casehardened  doc- 
trinarian in  statecraft.  To  take  such  a  view  was  neither  prudent  nor 
profitable.  The  British  nav)*^  and  the  German  army  could  have  kept 
the  world  at  peace,  as  they  had  done  for  forty  years,  and  the  cases  of 
Dutch  and  Norwegian  shipping,  and  the  Dutch  East  Indies,  were  certainly 
in  favor  of  the  contentions  of  the  British.  Even  the  French  colonial 
empire  was  to  a  large  extent  at  the  mercy  of  the  British,  and  despite  that 
it  had  done  fairly  well,  would  have  done  better  yet  were  the  French  as 
good  colonizers  as  the  British  are. 

Emperor  William  was  an  ardent  navalist.     He  loved  to  dwell  on 


42  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  possessive  adjective:  Mein — my.  Meine  Flotte  was,  next  to  meine 
Armcc,  tlie  piece  dc  resistance  of  every  speech  he  made.  Coupled  with  the 
unfortunate  tendency  to  see  in  Great  Britain  but  his  uncle,  Edward  VII, 
that  failing  was  to  bring  on  disaster  in  the  end. 

The  impartial  observer  and  student  cannot  fail  to  arrive  at  the  con- 
clusion that  Germany's  prestige  would  in  nowise  have  suffered  had  she 
completely  acquiesced  in  the  two-power  standard.  Moreover,  she  would 
have  benefited  thereby.  The  claim  advanced  by  apologists  for  the  Ger- 
man government,  that  Great  Britain  was  jealous  of  Germany's  com- 
merce and  merchant  marine,  sounds  logical  enough  to  those  who  are 
anxious  to  hear  it,  but  is  not  convincing.  Germany  herself  was  too  good 
a  buyer  in  Great  Britain  and  her  colonies,  and  supplemented  too  well 
British  industry  and  trade,  to  have  been  selected  by  Great  Britain  for 
destruction  on  that  account.  The  boycott  of  German  goods  agreed  on 
later  by  the  Allies  was  a  French  measure  rather  than  a  British  one. 
There  is  no  doubt  that,  had  Germany  taken  a  more  sympathetic  view  of  the 
facts  in  Great  Britain's  national  defense  scheme,  there  would  have  been 
a  perfect  rapprochement  between  the  two  and  the  peace  of  the  world  would 
have  been  far  better  secured  than  any  other  means  or  method  can  ever 
achieve.  The  addition  of  Great  Britain  to  the  Triple  Alliance  would 
have  put  an  end  to  the  mad  race  in  naval  and  military  preparation  and 
a  partial  disarmament  would  have  been  possible  even. 

There  were  men  in  both  capitals  who  realized  this.  Lord  Haldane 
was  one  of  the  leaders  in  the  British  group  of  so-called  pacifists,  who 
pleaded  with  the  German  government  to  be  reasonable.  His  words  found 
indeed  an  echo  in  Germany,  but  not  in  the  right  circles.  There  was  no 
such  thing  as  representative  government  in  Germany;  quite  the  last 
thing  William  and  his  caste  wanted  was  a  responsible  ministry.  The 
invasion  of  England  by  Roman,  Saxon,  Dane  and  Norman  was  thought 
too  anterior  to  be  applicable  in  our  day,  said  those  in  control  of  German 
public  opinion — as  bad  a  set  of  swashbuckling  militaristic  politicians 
and  pressmen  as  have  ever  ridden  a  people  over  the  brink  of  the  abyss. 
If  Great  Britain  wanted  to  build  a  score  of  ships  to  Germany's  ten  that 
was  her  business.  The  next  naval  program  of  Germany  would  provide 
for  forty  for  the  twenty  and  the  best  man  was  to  win.  Great  Britain 
wanted  to  form  a  world  hegemony  and  it  had  become  the  duty  of  Germany 
to  prevent  that.  ^'^ 

Such  childish  twaddle  found  response  in  kind  in  London,  of  course. 
"The  German  peril"  was  on  every  lip.  Mr.  Arthur  Lee,  then  civil  lord  of 
the  admiralty,  announced  quite  calmly  one  day  that  the  German  fleet 
could  be  sunjc  out  of  hand  by  the  British.  That  extravagant  framing  of 
the  case  was  not  only  ill-advised  but  it  was  also  an  insult  to  the  Germans. 


THE  CASE  OF  THE  TWO-POWER  STANDARD  43 

Needless  to  say,  it  furnished  the  German  navaHsts  with  the  very  argu- 
ments they  needed. 

Lord  Haldane,  being  a  farsighted  Scot,  continued  to  labor  for  an 
understanding  on  this  point  between  Great  Britain  and  Germany.  But 
he  labored  under  the  handicap  of  having  as  many  jingoes  to  fight  as  his 
German  collaborators  had  chauvinists  to  contend  with.  By  1902  the 
growth  of  the  German  navy  began  to  assume  alarming  proportions,  as 
the  British  saw  it.  The  tension  between  the  two  countries  grew  with 
every  day.  Propaganda  for  larger  fleets  had  in  the  two  countries  invaded 
every  sphere  of  life.  Banquet  table,  platform,  pulpit,  press,  novel  and 
play,  and  the  very  schools  were  turned  to  the  discussion  of  the  same  thing : 
More  armament  on  sea  and  then  more  of  it. 

A  Race  Between  Jingo  and  Chauvinist 

The  coming  into  power  of  the  Liberal  Party  in  Great  Britain  in  1906 
improved  the  situation  a  little.  In  London,  as  well  as  in  Berlin,  men  began 
to  take  stock  a  little,  and  for  a  while  it  seemed  as  if  some  degree  of  reason- 
ableness was  to  prevail.  There  is  ample  evidence  to  show  that  on  both 
sides  an  awakening  had  come.  But  it  was  too  late  now.  The  furor  was 
travelling  by  its  own  impetus.  Such  men  as  Haldane  and  Asquith,  and 
even  Sir  Edward  Grey,  did  their  best  to  assure  the  British  public  that, 
after  all,  the  case  was  not  as  critical  as  had  been  thought.  But  they  did 
not  succeed  in  reassuring  their  public,  nor  did  the  jingoes  in  official 
position  and  in  the  press  allow  the  British  public  to  forget  what  so 
recently  had  excited  it.  The  fact  is  that  the  German  peril  had  been  much 
exaggerated,  as  the  developments  of  the  Great  War  have  so  amply  demon- 
strated.   The  British  fleet  was  shown  still  able  to  defend  the  home  shores. 

This,  in  short,  was  the  case  as  it  appeared  before  the  public. 

But  while  the  flood  gates  of  propaganda  were  open  the  several 
foreign  offices  and  diplomatic  services  were  not  idle.  The  man  in  the 
street  has  ever  been  in  ignorance  of  what  goes  on  in  the  chancelleries, 
foreign  offices  and  embassies,  which  need  not  surprise  since  even  parlia- 
ments and  congresses  in  this  imperfect  world  of  ours  are  generally  con- 
fronted by  the  executive  branch  of  the  government  with  little  more  than 
the  fait  accompli. 

In  Paris,  London  and  St.  Petersburg  diplomatists  were  feverishly  at 
work  making  of  the  Franco-Russian  alliance  the  Triple  Entente.  The 
busiest  of  them  was  King  Edward  VII. 

For  reasons  that  are  only  known  in  part,  Edward  VII  was  at  no 
time  much  of  a  friend  of  things  German,  despite  the  fact  that  his  father 
was  a  German;  despite  the  fact  that  his  mother  was  so  typically  of  that 


44  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

race  that  she  was  not  able  to  entirely  rid  herself  of  her  German  accent. 
At  any  rate,  Edward  was  no  admirer  of  the  country  of  his  ancestors. 
Some  say  that  he  took  very  much  to  heart  the  grievances  of  his  sister 
Victoria,  who  was  married  to  Frederik,  emperor  of  a  hundred  days,  and 
father  of  William  11.  That  princess-royal  of  Great  Britain  was  never 
acclimated  in  the  chilly,  stiff  and  discipline-ridden  atmosphere  of  the  Berlin 
court,  where  everything  moved  according  to  the  rules  of  the  average, 
typical  German  household.  She  was  and  remained  the  Auslaenderin — the 
foreigner — to  whom  Bismarck  was  in  the  habit  of  referring  as  die  Bng- 
laenderin.  The  Iron  Chancellor  was  not  exactly  the  personification  of 
tact  and  the  Crownprincess  Victoria  loathed  the  very  sight  of  him. 
Edward  VII  is  said  to  have  been  influenced  by  this. 

But  that  was  not  all.  At  the  Berlin  court  much  attention  has  always 
been  given  to  correct  conduct  in  sex  matters.  Notable  exceptions  are 
recorded,  of  course,  but  generally  the  monarchs  and  princes  had  to  behave 
after  sowing  their  wild  oats  before  marriage.  Emperor  William,  especially, 
was  a  stickler  in  this  respect — was  a  puritan,  in  fact.  All  would  have 
been  well  had  he,  as  a  sensible  monarch  should  do,  confined  such  discipline 
to  himself.  But  the  great  meddler  that  was  in  him  did  not  allow  that. 
There  happened  to  be  in  the  waters  of  Kiel,  on  the  occasion  of  the  annual 
regatta,  an  American  yacht  with  a  particularly  handsome  woman  aboard. 
The  lady  had  a  somewhat  frayed  reputation,  due  to  an  acquaintance  with 
Edward  VII,  as  Prince  of  Wales,  that  was  considered  too  intimate. 
Edward  heard  of  the  presence  of  his  former  love  and  promptly  paid  her 
a  visit — ^to  the  great  disgust  of  the  emperor.  William,  of  course,  consider- 
ing himself  the  guardian  and  head  not  only  of  all  the  Hohenzollerns,  but 
their  relatives  by  marriage  as  well,  chided  his  flighty  uncle.  Edward  told 
his  nephew,  Willie,  that  he  had  better  mind  his  own  business.  It  is  said 
that  this  was  the  last  time  that  the  two  men  spoke  to  one  another  on  a 
strictly  personal  matter. 

Among  the  many  mistakes  made  by  William  II  was  the  one  that  he 
looked  upon  his  uncle  as  a  sort  of  royal  good-for-nothing,  as  he  put  it 
in  a  letter  on  one  occasion.  In  addition  to  being  somewhat  presumptuous 
for  a  nephew  to  thus  adjudicate  his  uncle  and  elder,  it  was  foolish,  to 
say  the  least.  Queen  Victoria  had  not  given  her  son  much  of  an  oppor- 
tunity to  occupy  himself  with  the  very  limited  affairs  of  the  British 
crown.  To  what  little  actual  business  there  was  she  gave  attention  her- 
self. The  ministry  took  care  of  the  government  from  cellar  to  garret, 
left  the  queen  the  parlor  and  the  heir-presumptive  the  porch,  as  it  were. 
As  Prince  of  Wales,  the  duties  of  Edward  had  been  confined  to  laying 
cornerstones,  visiting  hospitals  and  almshouses  and  receiving  the  lesser 
potentates.     That  left  him  a  great  deal  of  leisure,   naturally,  and  this 


A  RACE  BET!WEEN  JINGO  AND  CHAUVINIST  45 

the  prince  spent  in  a  manner  agreeable  to  himself  and  seldom  agreeable 
to  his  mother.  Queen  Victoria  used  to  complain  of  this  within  the  family, 
and  so  it  came  that  Bertie  had  not  as  good  name  entre  eux  as  he  would 
have  had  under  the  cast-iron  regime  at  the  Berlin  residence.  Why 
William  II  should  have  concluded  that  his  uncle  and  brother-sovereign 
was  a  puddinghead  besides  is  not  a  matter  of  record,  but  a  fact  never- 
theless. 

The  Anti-German  Policy  of  Edward  VII 

Edward  VII  has  been  credited,  or  discredited,  as  the  case  may  be, 
with  the  intention  of  making  the  British  sovereign  less  of  a  figurehead 
than  he  had  been  in  the  past.  To  that  have  been  ascribed  his  activities 
known  as  the  "isolation"  of  Germany. 

The  isolation  of  Germany  was  taken  in  hand  by  Edward  VII  imme- 
diately upon  the  death  of  Queen  Victoria  in  1901.  While  the  public  of 
Paris  was  still  laughing  over  the  Boer  War  caricatures  in  Le  Rire  and  such 
salacious  publications  as  I'Assiette  au  Buerre,  in  which  Queen  Victoria 
especially  did  not  fare  well,  and  while  the  humanitarians  of  France  were 
still  demanding  that,  in  the  name  of  civilization  and  human  progress, 
France,  Russia  and  eventually  Germany  and  her  allies  strike  Great  Britain 
without  loss  of  time,  and  put  an  end  to  her  hegemony,  Edward  was  busy 
laying  the  foundations  of  a  policy  that  was  to  crush  the  man  in  Berlin, 
who  had  been  quite  busy  giving  his  grandmother  good  military  advice  how 
the  Boers  could  be  overcome  the  quickest.  From  sending  a  telegram  of 
congratulation  to  President  Oom  Paul  Kruger,  at  the  time  of  the  Jamieson 
Raid,  to  that  sort  of  thing  was  quite  a  step,  to  be  sure.  But  to  versatile, 
volatile  William  that  was  nothing. 

It  really  was  not  difficult  to  win  the  French  diplomatists  over.  They 
had  discovered  during  the  Fashoda  Affair  that  it  is  not  easy  to  perturb 
the  British  lion,  or  to  take  what  he  has  in  his  claws.  There  had  also  been 
a  rather  annoying  incident  on  the  Lorraine  border,  and,  above  all,  the 
conduct  of  the  Russian  ministers  of  foreign  affairs  was  not  uniformly 
satisfactory.  There  were  times  when  the  Franco-Russian  alliance  seemed 
on  the  verge  of  expiring.  Count  Muravieff  was  an  arriviste  diplomatically, 
somewhat  pro-German  by  nature  and  easily  influenced,  and  his  successor, 
Count  Lamsdorff,  was  openly  Germanophile.  It  was  one's  duty  under  such 
circumstances  to  look  about  for  a  sort  of  supplementary  insurance  policy. 
The  German  population  was  increasing  at  a  truly  remarkable  speed,  having 
about  1900  reached  its  best  birthrate,  which  meant  a  greater  army  twenty 
years  hence,  and  meanwhile  a  greater  production,  and  so  more  exports 
and  more  wealth.     There  was  nothing  else  to  do  for  the  prudent  states- 


46  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

man  but  to  effect  an  understanding  with  a  nation  that  was  more  vitally 
interested  in  such  things  than  was  Russia,  apparently.  Czar  Nicholas 
meanwhile  had  shown  toward  the  Franco-Russian  alliance  an  indifference 
that  was  disconcerting.  The  reactionaries  of  his  court,  and  the  nobility 
of  his  empire,  generally,  had  never  been  any  too  fond  of  this  international 
misalliance.  To  some  extent  also  German  influence  in  St.  Petersburg 
had  undermined  the  standing  of  the  Franco-Russian  entente,  as  it  was 
still  called,  and  the  Germanic  nobles  in  the  Baltic  provinces  also  threw 
their  weight  in  the  scale  against  the  arrangement  with  France. 

But  there  were  Russians,  and  a  good  many  of  them  were  to  be 
found  in  Paris,  who  were  still  ardent  supporters  of  the  alliance.  Some  of 
them  had  looked  rather  farther  into  the  future  than  M.  de  Giers  and 
Prince  Lobanoff  had  done.  They  had  not  seen  it  merely  as  a  curb  upon 
the  imperialism  of  Great  Britain,  but  they  had  also  kept  Germany  in 
mind.  Though  the  Russo-Polish  element  could  gain  nothing  by  setting 
Russia  upon  Germany,  they,  nevertheless,  actuated  by  their  greater  hatred 
'of  the  Prussians,  and  to  some  extent  by  their  love  of  France,  did  every- 
thing they  could  to  keep  the  treaty  alive.  M.  de  Hansen,  a  Dane  with  a 
grudge  against  Bismarck  in  particular,  and  all  things  German  in  general, 
who  was  being  credited  with  having  engineered  the  Franco-Russian  pact 
with  Gustave  Flourens,  then  French  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  had  been 
given  a  great  deal  of  assistance  by  the  influential  Poles  at  Paris  and  St. 
Petersburg,  among  whom  was  a  certain  Ratchkowsky,  connected  with  the 
Russian  secret  service  abroad.  Baron  Mohrenheim,  at  that  time  Russian 
ambassador  at  Paris,  had  never  been  more  than  lukewarm  toward  the  pro- 
posal, following  in  this  the  example  of  de  Giers,  his  chief  in  St.  Petersburg. 
The  treaty  seems  to  have  come  about  for  no  other  reason  than  that  both 
of  the  contracting  parties  needed  one  another  and  were  willing  to  let 
matters  rest  with  the  strictly  neo-platonic  arrangement  that  was  made. 

France,  therefore,  was  easily  won  over  to  the  entente  cordiale,  which 
Edward  VII  had  in  mind,  when  the  British  press  began  to  speak  of  a 
rapprochement.  In  1904  relations  between  France  and  Great  Britain  were 
already  of  so  cordial  a  character  that  the  entente  cordiale  could  be  referred 
to  in  Downing  Street  without  the  press  of  Europe  going  either  into  ecstacy 
or  suffering  a  convulsion. 

One  of  the  first  practical  results  of  the  entente  between  Great  Britain 
and  France  was  that  the  latter  acknowledged  the  justice  of  claims  Great 
Britain  had  made  in  regard  to  Egypt.  France  also  receded  from  the 
position  she  had  taken,  and  stoutly  defended  in  the  past,  on  the  exclusive 
fisheries  rights  in  the  waters  of  Newfoundland,  retained  by  her  in  the 
treaty  of  Utrecht.  In  return  for  these  cessions  France  was  given  i 
free  hand  by  Great  Britain  in  Morocco,   a  transaction  which  left  the 


THE  ANTPGERMAN  POLICY  OF  EDWARD  Vll  47 

German  interests,  mostly  of  a  special  concession  character,  high  and  dry, 
as  members  of  the  German  Reichstag  claimed  at  the  time.  Prince  von 
Buelow,  then  chancellor,  was  not  inclined  to  make  an  issue  of  the  case, 
and  pointed  out  that  Germany's  interests  in  Morocco  were  entirely  eco- 
nomic, and  that,  since  Spain  had  been  left  a  place  in  Moroccan  affairs, 
there  was  no  reason  to  suppose  that  German  commerce  would  be  excluded. 

The  Morocco  affair  was  to  keep  the  chancelleries  and  diplomatic 
missions  in  Europe  occupied  for  a  long  time — seven  years.  On  at  least 
one  occasion  it  came  close  to  leading  to  war  between  Germany  and  France, 
and  the  allies  of  both,  probably.  At  this  date  it  seems  hardly  worth  while 
to  give  too  much  attention  to  the  event ;  its  main  outlines  must  be  drawn, 
however. 

Though  the  German  chancellor  had  stated  publicly  that  Germany  had 
only  economic  interests  in  Morocco,  the  German  government  a  few  months 
later,  urged  by  special  interests  with  investments  in  the  country,  it  is 
charged,  demanded  that  the  status  of  the  sultanate  be  reviewed  at  a  con- 
ference at  which  the  representatives  of  all  claimants  should  be  heard. 
The  conference  took  place  after  the  French  minister  of  foreign  affairs, 
M.  Delcasse,  had  resigned  in  protest.  Even  the  French  government  was 
not  entirely  sure  of  its  ground,  despite  the  attitude  of  its  foreign  minister. 
It  was  really  a  case  of  Delcasse  making  the  best  of  a  bad  bargain.  Great 
Britain  had  taken  possession  in  Egypt,  and  France's  compensation  for  the 
concessions  made  on  the  Nile  was  now  being  questioned  and  placed  in 
jeopardy.  Small  wonder  that  the  minister  decided  to  abandon  his  post, 
and  was  from  that  moment  on  one  of  Germany's  arch  enemies. 

Diplomacy  in  Its  Heyday 

The  conference  of  Algeciras  was  at  first  inclined  to  place  Morocco  under 
international  control.  The  Germans  were  satisfied  with  that  proposal, 
and,  their  vanity  having  been  appeased,  they  consented  readily  enough 
that  France  continue  her  work,  after  the  sphere  of  influence  of  the  Spanish 
had  been  inconsiderably  augmented.  So  far  as  the  German  government  is 
concerned,  anyway,  all  the  noise  that  was  made  at  home  was  nothing  more 
than  incident  to  a  saving  of  face  under  difficult  conditions.  The  Alldeutschen 
— Pan-Germans — saw  in  the  Morocco  affair  a  good  opportunity  to  embar- 
rass the  government,  which  after  a  short  flaring  up  in  regard  to  armament 
on  the  sea,  had  again  subsided  into  a  closer  adherence  to  the  policies  due  the 
Triple  Alliance.  That  great  conservative  in  Vienna,  Emperor  Francis 
Joseph,  was  forever  opposed,  so  long  as  his  mind  was  active  enough,  to 
innovations  in  Triple  Alliance  politics  that  might  have  war  in  their  wake. 
It  is  regrettable  that  the  advice  of  the  old  man  was  not  more  often  heeded 


48  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

by  Berlin,  which  is  easily  understood  since  in  that  capital  already  men  were 
thinking  of  Austria-Hungary  as  a  political  incubus. 

Though  many  promises  had  been  made  and  many  understandings 
arrived  at,  the  French  did  not  always  show  German  interests  in  Morocco 
that  consideration  which  they  thought  their  due.  The  result  was  that, 
after  much  wrangling,  an  agreement  was  entered  into,  in  specific  terms, 
between  France  and  Germany,  1909,  by  which  the  commercial  interests 
of  Germany  and  the  political  position  of  France,  in  Morocco,  were  clearly 
defined.  In  1911  French  troops,  for  the  purpose  of  settling  disorder 
in  the  interior,  penetrated  beyond  the  zone  given  to  France.  This  and 
continuous  complaints  of  German  firms  that  they  were  being  discriminated 
against  by  the  French  caused  the  German  government  to  send  the  gun- 
boat "Panther"  to  Agadir  Bay.  Again,  Europe  was  threatened  by  war, 
and  again  the  entente  cordiale,  of  which  the  prime  mover,  Edward  VI L 
was  now  dead,  saved  the  situation.  The  debates  in  the  Reichstag  of 
these  days  show  how  completely  checkmated  had  been  Germany  by  Great 
Britain — the  country  which  but  a  few  years  ago  had  nary  a  friend  and 
no  ally  in  Europe. 

The  French  ceded  some  territory  in  the  Congo  regions  to  the  Germans 
and  another  Morocco  incident  was  closed. 

In  1907  there  was  effected  an  entente  between  Great  Britain  and 
Russia.  The  pact  was  never  committed  to  paper,  so  far  as  is  known; 
it  was  sealed  with  what  amounted  to  a  partition  of  Persia.  The  country 
in  question  was  divided  into  two  zones  of  interests,  or  political  spheres. 
The  northern  went  to  Russia,  the  southern  to  Great  Britain,  which  thereby 
gained  entry  into  the  potentially  rich  valley  of  Mesopotamia.  Here,  too, 
hostile  contact  was  had  with  German  interests.  The  Turkish  government 
had  given,  and  was  about  to  give  more,  railroad  concessions  to  German 
capitalists,  the  system  projected  being  known  as  the  Bagdad  railroad. 
The  Deutsche  Bank  of  Berlin  was  behind  this  enterprise.  The  Germans 
built  (1890)  a  branch  line  from  Ismid  to  Ada  Basar,  extended  the  trunk 
line  to  Eski-Shehir  and  Angora  (1892)  and  then  to  Konia  (1896).  In 
1902,  the  Deutsche  Bank  was  given  the  concession  to  continue  the  main 
line  into  Mesopotamia  and  immediately  began  work,  starting  at  several 
points  at  the  same  time.  At  first  it  was  the  intention  of  the  company  to 
build  the  line  through  to  Koweit  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  but  the  British 
government  objected  to  this.  An  agreement  between  the  Turkish  and 
British  governments  (1913)  limited  the  concession  of  the  Deutsche  Bank 
south  of  Bagdad  to  the  line  Bagdad-Basra,  585  kilometers  long. 

The  ring  about  Germany  and  her  allies  was  now  complete.  Prince 
LobanoflF  had  been  the  first  to  give  this  political  scheme  his  attention. 
But  he  was  not  the  man  to  carry  it  out,  or  rather  before  he  could  con- 


DIPLOMACY  IN  ITS  HEYDAY  49 

summate  his  plan  death  carried  liim  oft".  It  seems  that  his  escapade  with 
the  wife  of  the  French  diplomatic  secretary  had  robbed  him  of  much 
of  the  prestige  he  needed  to  carry  out  his  design.  Though  he  was  an 
ardent  Francophile,  even  government  circles  in  Paris  grew  wary  of  this 
adventurer  in  international  politics — the  fate  of  nations.  King  Edward 
succeeded  far  better — beyond  his  own  expectations,  it  would  seem.  The 
isolation  of  Germany  was  complete.  It  was  considered  the  more  complete, 
because  everybody  expected  the  Hapsburg  monarchy  to  crumble  from 
one  season  to  another,  while  Italy  had  long  ago  ceased  to  be  regarded 
as  a  staunch  member  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  a  little  matter  to  which  M. 
Barrere,  the  French  ambassador  at  Rome,  attended  well.  The  Triple 
Entente,  therefore,  was  the  major  fact  of  the  political  situation  in  Europe 
Germans  who  realized  that  a  contest  with  the  Triple  Entente  was  in- 
evitable and  not  far  off  were  not  few  in  number.  Most  of  them  were 
Socialists,  however,  and  to  be  a  Socialist  damned  in  those  days  whatever 
view  was  held  by  one.  In  Germany,  unfortunately  for  the  people,  it  was 
not  a  case  of  what  was  said,  but  rather  one  of  who  said  it.  Infallibility 
of  the  government  was  more  than  ever  the  favorite  doctrine,  and  the 
privileges  of  this  were  extended  in  the  most  gratuitous  manner  to  all 
who  seemed  in  authority,  be  that  in  state  administration,  politics  oi 
society.  The  Socialists  alone  were  denied  this,  despite  the  fact  that  they 
represented  the  common  people  much  more  than  the  artificial  majority  sent 
into  the  state  legislatures  by  the  plural  vote  election  system  of  the  leading 
state,  Prussia,  and  its  principal  supporter  in  reactionism,  Saxony.  Social- 
ists such  as  David,  Scheidemann,  Haase,  Ledebour,  Liebknecht,  Braun 
and  Noske  were  not  listened  to,  because  it  was  assumed  that  they  saw 
the  situation  through  the  black  spectacles  of  partisanship.  Indeed  a  review 
of  the  case  nowadays  fails  to  indicate  an  avenue  of  escape  which  Germany 
might  have  taken, 

A  General  Maneuvering  for  Position 

It  was  especially  the  Alldeutschen,  or  Pan-Germans,  who  were  ex- 
travagant in  their  claims  and  intemperate  in  their  speech.  The  Pan- 
German  League  first  came  into  prominence  about  1890,  when  it  distin- 
guished itself  in  adverse  criticism  of  the  cession  to  Great  Britain  of  minor 
interests  in  Zanzibar  and  in  East  Africa  in  return  for  the  transfer  to 
Germany  of  Heligoland,  which  up  to  that  time  had  been  held  by  the 
British,  despite  its  proximity  to  the  German  ports  on  the  North  Sea. 
During  the  time  of  international  stress  which  followed  the  Agadir  inci- 
dent and  the  realization  that  the  Triple  Entente  was  indeed  fait  accompli 
and  likely  to  stand  any  test  in  the  fire,  the  Pan-Germanic  Partv  and  its 


so  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

publications  supported  any  movement  calculated  to  promote  armament. 
The  German  people  and  even  the  government,  as  the  attitude  of  the  German 
chancellors  of  those  years  shows,  were  eager  to  give  their  enemies  a  mini- 
mum of  affront,  but  the  less  the  cautious  element  talked,  the  louder  were  the 
Pan-Germans.  Today  one  cannot  read  their  fulminations  without  being 
struck  by  the  force  of  the  adage  of  old: 

"Whom  the  gods  will  destroy  they  first  make  mad." 

The  completion  of  the  Franco-Russo-British  entente  seems  to  have  had 
little  effect  upon  the  radical  Alldeutschen.  More  and  more  they  pressed 
for  armament  on  sea  and  land.  The  fear  of  the  Englishman  that  his 
tight,  little  isle  might  be  invaded  had  subsided  at  least  a  little  by  1909. 
The  "Englishman's  Home"  seemed  again  as  secure  as  the  British  navy 
could  make  it.  In  that  year,  however,  it  was  shown  that  the  German 
navy  was  still  growing  at  too  rapid  a  pace,  and  the  news  that  Krupp, 
with  that  fine  impartiality  that  distinguishes  the  conduct  of  the  princes  of 
industry,  was  delivering  as  many  armor  plates  to  Great  Britain  as  to 
Germany  added  to  the  fear  in  Great  Britain.     The  plates  might  be  bad. 

A  really  unbearable  situation  had  been  brought  about.  It  was  so 
unbearable  that  Winston  Churchill,  first  lord  of  the  admiralty,  proposed 
a  naval  holiday,  a  period  in  which  no  keels  for  new  battleships  should  be 
laid  down.  In  Germany  that  proposal  found  no  willing  ears,  because  it 
was  interpreted  as  a  ruse.  Great  Britain  had  more  hulls  on  the  stocks  than 
had  Germany.  Be  that  as  it  may,  no  concessions  were  made  in  Berlin. 
The  fight  was  on,  and,  while  as  yet  no  powder  was  being  burned,  it  was 
already  a  case  of  no  quarter. 

Lord  Haldane,  who  had  been  so  active  in  behalf  of  the  limitation 
of  naval  armament  that  he  earned  the  reputation  of  being  a  Germanophile, 
which  was  already  the  least  desirable  name  one  could  have  in  Great 
Britain,  made  another  trip  to  Germany,  this  time  officially  for  the  Liberal 
government.  The  German  government  had  the  utmost  confidence  in 
Haldane,  and  showed  itself  most  conciliatory.  But  it  was  no  longer  a 
case  of  agreeing  in  regard  to  the  two-power  standard  or  anything  con- 
nected therewith.  It  was  the  Triple  Entente  that  worried  Berlin.  The 
German  government  was  willing  to  reduce  its  own  naval  program  greatly 
in  case  the  Liberal  government  would  agree  to  remain  neutral  in  case 
there  should  be  war  between  Germany  and  France.  Lord  Haldane  was 
not  able  to  make  that  promise,  but,  after  communicating  with  his  govern- 
ment, was  ready  to  put  Great  Britain  on  record  as  willing  to  leave  France 
to  her  fate  in  case  she  attacked  Germany.  In  view  of  what  happened  in 
1914,  a  scant  two  years  later,  this  is  of  interest.  The  offer  made  by  Lord 
Haldane  was  tantamount  to  a  notice  upon  Germany  that  Great  Britain 
would  side  with  France  in  case  of  aggression  on  the  part  of  the  Germans. 


A  GENERAL  MANEUVERING  FOR  POSITION  51 

The  remarkable  feature  of  this  is  that,  according  to  statements  made  to 
me  by  men  in  high  official  position  in  Berlin,  who  were  in  a  position  to 
know,  the  German  government  did  not  fully  comprehend  this  at  that  time. 
I  have  proof  to  show  that  Lord  Haldane  was,  seemingly,  not  understood. 
Had  he  been  understood  the  history  of  July  and  August,  1914,  might  be 
other  than  what  it  is. 

With  this  incident  came  to  a  close  all  effort  on  both  sides  to  limit 
the  naval  programs  of  the  two  countries.  In  Germany  every  Socialist 
leader  and  many  of  the  prominent  men  in  the  government  had  spoken  in 
favor  of  it,  and  in  Great  Britain  the  Liberal  Party  had  looked  upon  it  as  a 
sort  of  plank  in  their  platform.  They  had  promised  the  electorate  that 
the  money  so  saved  was  to  be  used  in  a  number  of  socio-economic  reforms 
that  were  greatly  needed.  Such  men  as  Campbell-Bannerman,  Lloyd 
George,  Lord  Morley,  Vivian,  Trevelyan  and  Haldane,  not  to  mention 
a  score  of  others,  had  been  behind  the  movement.  Nothing  whatever 
had  come  of  it,  and  for  that  secret  diplomacy  was  responsible. 

To  say  that  every  Englishman  and  German  who  favored  an  under- 
standing between  their  countries  on  the  question  of  naval  armament  was  a 
deceiver  is  to  take  it  for  granted  that  there  are  no  honest  men  in  govern- 
ment. If  that  view  should  actually  represent  a  fact  then  we  must  admit 
that  those  cheerful  pessimists,  the  anarchists,  are  right  after  all.  But 
there  is  no  reason  to  assume  that  all  the  honest  men  are  out  of  government, 
though  election  speeches  would  have  it  so,  as  a  rule.  The  fact  is  that,  as 
I  will  show  in  the  chapter  following,  some  forty  men  had  made  up 
their  mind  that  there  should  be  war,  a  world  war,  if  necessary,  and  that 
they  succeeded  all  too  well.  What  is  more,  these  forty  men  were  not  all 
in  one  capital.  They  belonged  to  the  foreign  offices  and  corps  diplomatiques 
in  London,  Paris,  Petrograd,  Berlin  and  Vienna.  The  situation  in  Europe 
had  given  diplomacy  its  heyday,  and  never  before  had  the  intriguant  such 
an  opportunity. 

Preparedness  for  War  Gets  New  Start 

The  mission  of  Haldane,  having  been  fruitless,  the  German  govern- 
ment decided  upon  the  military  law  of  1913,  which  increased  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  line  to  866,000  officers  and  men,  without  affecting  the 
reserves  and  older  bans,  however.  The  increase  itself  was  about  135,000 
officers  and  men — not  great  in  itself,  but  notice  to  the  world  that  military 
preparedness  in  Germany  was  being  put  on  yet  a  larger  base.  The  law 
was  passed  June  30.  On  July  19  came  the  reply  from  France  in  the 
form  of  a  similar  law,  and  the  battle  under  cover  was  on  more  than  before. 
Most  Germans  r^f^.rred  to  the  law  as  a  new  form  of  mobilization,  and 


52  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

such,  in  effect,  it  was  to  be.  Criticism  of  the  government  eHcited  nothing 
more  than  reference  to  what  was  being  done  in  Russia.  In  March,  1913, 
the  Russian  government  also  increased  its  standing  army  materially  and 
provided  for  a  general  and  thorough  reorganization,  and,  meanwhile,  the 
strategic  railroads  along  the  Polish-Prussian  and  Russo-Galician  borders 
were  being  pushed  to  completion  as  rapidly  as  possible.  It  was  known 
that  the  last  of  these  roads  would  be  completed  in  1915.  The  French 
banks  and  investors  had  furnished  the  money  for  the  building  of  these 
lines.  It  was  difficult  to  claim  that  economic  requirements  were  the  reason 
for  their  building,  and  St.  Petersburg,  therefore,  calmly  asserted  that  the 
railroads  were  meant  for  defensive  purposes  only.  Since  the  gun  may 
be  used  for  aggression  as  well  as  in  defense  that  was  begging  the  question, 
of  course. 

To  what  extent  the  constantly  growing  industries  of  Germany,  with 
their  resulting  exports  and  increase  in  wealth,  were  responsible  for  the 
Great  War  is  entirely  a  matter  of  controversy  into  which  it  will  not  pay  to 
enter.  That  Germany  was  getting  to  be  a  very  dangerous  neighbor  to 
France  is  true  enough.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  it  was  envy  of  German 
industriousness  and  efficiency,  as  has  been  claimed,  which  induced  the 
French  to  risk  a  war.  France  herself  was  still  richer  than  Germany — 
richer  especially  in  so  far  that  she  had  room  for  her  population,  a  rather 
negative  quality  in  this  instance,  since  the  rapid  growth  in  population  of 
the  German  empire  constituted  in  itself  a  sort  of  wealth  which  France 
had  to  fear  more  than  the  rapidly  accumulating  savings  of  the  German 
people.  In  1908  the  density  per  square  mile  in  Germany  was  290.4  per- 
sons, while  in  France  it  was  189,  or  about  100  less.  The  area  of  the 
two  countries  was  208,780  square  miles  for  Germany  and  207,509  for 
France;  the  population  respectively  66,800,000  and  39,800,000.  What 
France  had  to  fear  was  that  she  would  lose  more  territory  to  the  Germans 
soon  or  late,  and  this,  then,  will  be  accepted  by  the  future  historian  as  the 
actual  causal  motive  of  the  Great  War,  so  far  as  France  and  Germany 
are  concerned.  The  philosophical  investigator  will  arrive  at  a  similar 
conclusion,  no  doubt,  with  the  exception  that  he  will  state  the  case  in 
terms  of  national  biology.  That  France  and  Great  Britain,  and  the  United 
States  destroyed  completely  Germany's  manufacture  and  commerce — in  the 
most  ruthless  and  impolitic  fashion — is  more  to  be  looked  upon,  under 
the  circumstances,  as  a  preventive  measure  than  a  policy  completely  in 
being  at  the  outbreak  of  the  War.  To  cripple  Germany  in  this  manner  was 
the  sine  qua  non  of  the  prophylactis  of  the  so-called  Peace  Conference 
at  Paris. 

What  has  been  said  here  for  France  would  seem  to  apply  to  Great 
Britain.     Germany  was  a  long  way  oflF  from  being  the  dangerous  com- 


PREPAREDNESS  FOR  WAR  GETS  NEW  START    53 

petitor  of  the  British,  whom  apologists  in  the  German  government  have 
pictured.  There  is  something  in  the  foreign  trade  figures  of  the  two 
countries  which  has  been  overlooked.  In  1913  Great  Britain  imported 
to  the  amount  of  $3,741,048,000,  while  the  exports  totalled  $3,089,353,000, 
leaving  a  deficit  of  $561,695,000.  Germany  in  the  same  year  imported 
goods  and  materials  to  the  value  of  $2,773,850,000,  and  exported  $2,592,- 
239,000,  leaving  a  difference  against  her  of  $181,611,000.  In  the  one 
instance  we  have  a  population  of  about  46  millions  importing  3,741  million 
dollars  worth  of  merchandise  and  exporting  3,000  millions  worth,  while  in 
the  other  we  have  a  people  numbering  roundly  69  millions,  or  23  millions 
greater  in  number  than  the  British  population,  importing  only  2,773 
millions  worth  of  commodities  and  exporting  again  2,592  millions  worth. 
Though  the  difference  between  import  and  export,  in  both  cases,  does 
not  wholly  represent  home  consumption,  it  nevertheless  is  a  fact  that  the 
British  public,  2Z  millions  less,  consumed  more  than  the  German,  as  our 
figures  go,  at  least  three  times  as  much;  much  more  in  reality. 

In  the  case  of  Russia,  also,  it  was  not  a  question  of  getting  rid  of 
an  economic  competitor.  The  density  of  population  of  Russia  in  Europe 
was  in  1908  only  53.8  persons  per  square  mile,  while  for  the  empire  it 
was  only  14.92.  What  this  means  will  be  best  understood  when  it  is 
considered  that  the  density  in  Belgium  was  589  persons  for  each  square 
mile.  Americans  will  realize  that  better  in  comparison  with  the  density 
in  Rhode  Island,  which  is  508.5,  by  far  the  greatest  in  the  United  States. 
The  figures  for  Russian  exports  and  imports  were,  in  1913,  respectively 
$782,869,000  and  $707,627,000,  with  a  favorable  balance  of  $75,242,000, 
a  wholly  negligible  amount  for  a  population  of  about  177  million  persons. 
Density  and  foreign  trade  figures  show  both  that  Russia  was  neither  in 
need  of  more  room  nor  of  more  trade. 

The  case,  then,  was  entirely  a  question  of  politics.  That  the  elements 
of  national  biology  had  something  to  do  with  it  cannot  be  overlooked, 
however.  Still  it  would  seem  that  if  Belgium  could  get  along  with  a 
density  of  589,  Germany  could  have  for  some  time  managed  with  a 
density  of  290.4 — at  least,  the  necessity  for  more  room  was  not  pressing 
enough  so  as  not  to  permit  her  government  to  select  a  more  propitious 
moment  for  a  war  of  conquest  and  annexation. 

The  Position  of  Austria-Hungary 

The  position  of  Austria-Hungary  in  the  setting  of  the  stage  for  the 
great  tragedy  is  very  unimportant.  As  second  member  of  the  Triple 
Alliance,  her  role,  politically,  was  great  enough;  militarily,  it  was  any- 
thing but  that.    For  years  she  troubled  nobody  and  managed  to  get  along 


54  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

with  all  her  neighbors.  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  of  Austria  and  Czar 
Alexander  III,  as  well  as  his  father,  had  been  on  the  best  of  terms.  The 
first  two  were  feudal  enough  in  their  state  tendency  to  be  perfectly  en 
rapport  on  all  matters  affecting  the  intercourse  of  their  states.  For 
Alexander  II  the  Austrian  emperor  was  progressive  enough  to  meet  his 
liberal  views.  Francis  Joseph  was  a  rare  personage  among  monarchs. 
Without  having  to  simulate  in  the  least  he  was  everything  to  all  men. 
Hence  his  great  success  as  the  ruler  of  a  dual  state  composed  of  no 
less  than  ten  races,  having  no  less  than  ten  sets  of  national  aspirations, 
and  all  that  in  an  age  in  which  liberal  tendency  was  not  as  scarce  or 
as  disregarded  in  his  realm  as  some  would  have  us  believe. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  government  made  two  great  mistakes.  The 
one  was  the  consequence  of  the  other.  In  October,  1908,  it  annexed  Bosnia 
and  Herzegovina,  since  the  Berlin  Congress  under  its  control,  without 
consulting  at  all  in  any  respect  the  wishes  of  the  people  thus  brought  into 
the  dual  monarchy.  Many  of  these  people  were  of  Slav  origin,  and 
what  is  more  important  the  majority  of  them  felt  attracted  to  what  had 
become  known  as  Jugo- Slavism. 

/  The  annexation  of  these  two  Turkish  provinces  had  been  contem- 
plated in  Vienna  for  a  long  time.  But  the  moment  was  never  propitious 
until  Count  Aehrenthal,  then  Austro-Hungarian  minister  of  foreign  aflFairs. 
made  it  that,  by  breaking  the  news  privately  to  Isvolski  under  circumstances 
that  placed  the  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs  at  a  great  disadvantage. 
In  September  of  1908  Count  Berchtold,  at  that  time  Austro-Hungarian 
ambassador  at  St.  Petersburg,  invited  Isvolski,  then  travelling  in  Austria, 
to  spend  a  few  days  at  a  hunting  lodge  of  his  near  Buchan  in  Bohemia. 
It  was  there,  while  the  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs  was  a  guest, 
that  Count  Aehrenthal  initiated  him  into  the  design  of  his  government  to 
annex  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina.  Isvolski  was  a  man  who  liked  to  please, 
and  the  sharp  Count  Aehrenthal,  an  apt  pupil  of  Metternich  at  his  worst, 
outwitted  him.  For  that  Isvolski  lost  his  post  in  the  Russian  cabinet  and 
later  went  to  Paris  as  ambassador,  there  to  nurse  his  resentment  of  both, 
his  own  good  nature  and  the  sharp  dealing  of  Counts  Aehrenthal  and 
Berchtold.  It  has  been  said  that  a  diplomatist  must  never  say  either  yes 
or  no.  Monsieur  Isvolski  seems  to  have  taken  that  too  literally.  Needless 
to  say  this  little  trick  did  not  in  any  way  improve  relations  between  the 
Triple  Entente  and  the  Triple  Alliance. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  government  prepared  the  ground  verv  poorlv 
for  the  annexation  of  the  two  provinces,  because,  two  years  before,  it 
had  allowed  the  big  Hungarian  landowners  to  inveigle  the  country  into 
a  sort  of  tariff  war  with  Serbia.  As  the  result  of  this  Serbian  exports 
to  the  Danube  country  had  gone  down  from  63,000,000  crowns  in  1905 


THE  POSITION  OF  AUSTRIA-HUNGARY  55 

to  12,500,000  crowns  in  1907,  though  Serbia  had  cut  her  imports  from 
the  same  country  for  the  two  years  only  from  32,000.000  to  25,000,000 
crowns,  that  is  to  say,  Serbia  had  exported  to  Austria-Hungary  50,500,000 
crowns  less  in  1907  than  in  1905,  but  had  bought  only  7,000,000  crowns 
less. 

For  a  while  it  seemed  as  if  the  Serbian  farmers  would  have  to 
choke  in  the  lard,  pork  and  prunes  they  had  to  sell.  But  Germany  came 
to  their  assistance  and  bought  to  the  tune  of  32,000,000  crowns  in  1907 
as  against  2,000,000  crowns  in  1905.  Belgium  likewise  increased  her  im- 
ports from  Serbia  from  300,000  crowns  to  13,000,000  crowns  in  1907.  Eco- 
nomic war  makes  as  strange  bed  fellows  as  the  other  sort.  The  fact  that 
Serbia  could  sell  to  advantage  was  due  entirely  to  international  railroad 
agreements,  which  permitted  German  and  Belgian  freight  cars  to  pass 
in  transit  through  Austria-Hungary  without  duty  having  to  be  paid  on 
their  cargoes.  That  Serbia  had  no  outlet  upon  the  Adriatic  Sea  made 
this  atrocious  case  of  tariff  discrimination  possible.  There  are  times 
when  governments  and  governed  as  well  must  be  protected  against  their 
own  stupidity,  and  this  was  such  a  case.  Had  fate  willed  it  that  Serbia 
could  get  to  the  sea  Austria-Hungary,  in  the  first  place,  would  have  never 
excluded  her  products,  and,  secondly,  Austria-Hungary  might  not  today  be 
in  the  position  she  is  in.    Again : 

Whom  the  gods  would  destroy  they  first  make  mad. 

The  Profits  of  Tariff  Discrimination 

The  ruthless  proceeding  against  Serbia  roused  the  anger  of  every 
Slav  in  the  monarchy.  It  gave  Jugo-Slavism  and  Pan-Slavism  the  very 
impetus  they  needed.  Overnight  the  quasi-secret  organization  of  the 
Jugo-Slavs,  the  somewhat  notorious  "Narodna  Odbrana,"  became  a  tre- 
mendous factor  and  in  the  end  Austria-Hungary  saw  more  of  her  people 
and  territory  carried  away  by  the  tariff  discrimination  against  Serbia  than 
she  had  gained  by  the  annexation  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina.  And  all 
this  to  please  a  landed  class,  which  thought  that  it  was  not  getting  enough 
out  of  special  privileges  enjoyed  in  vested  rights  and  the  unlimited  oppor- 
tunity to  exploit  the  peasant. 

Here,  too,  was  a  case  in  which  a  sovereign  state  thought  sovereignty 
to  be  a  patent  for  any  sort  of  conduct  toward  the  weaker  neighbor.  The 
worst  of  fallacies  is  independence  carried  to  extremes.  Even  the  most 
powerful  of  nations,  the  most  absolute  of  monarchs,  is  not  independent 
wholly  of  others.  The  time  usually  comes  when  transgression  againsi 
natural  law,  even  though  it  be  one  of  the  misunderstood  factors  in  national 
biology,  will  be  visited  upon  the  transgressor.    The  Great  War  had  many 


56  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

examples  of  this — enough  of  them  to  last  the  haughty  World  Powers  that 
remain  for  the  rest  of  their  existence.  Let  us  hope  that  at  least  this  lesson 
is  not  lost. 

Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand,  heir-presumptive  of  Austria  and  Hun- 
gary, had  made  the  mistake — and  for  the  future  ruler  of  several  millions 
of  Slavs  it  was  a  bad  mistake — of  permitting  himself  to  become  known 
as  a  Slavophobe.  To  what  extent  he  was  this  I  have  no  means  of  ascer- 
taining, but  there  is  hardly  ever  smoke  where  there  is  no  fire.  At  one 
time  he  was  credited  with  being  anti-Magyar.  Both  rumors  or  claims 
were  probably  greatly  exaggerated.  At  any  rate  he  was  done  to  death 
on  June  28,  1914,  by  Jugo-Slav  fanatics  in  the  town  of  Sarajevo,  Bosnia. 

For  several  days  it  was  feared  that  the  political  mine  of  Europe  was 
surely  sprung.  The  world  held  its  breath,  so  to  speak.  It  waited  for  the 
blow  to  fall  for  a  week  and  then  returned  to  its  business,  the  diplomatic 
world  to  its  vacations.  Twenty-six  days  passed  and  then  the  news  came 
that  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  had  sent  an  ultimatum  to  Belgrade 
the  like  of  which  had  not  been  transmitted  in  years.  When  the  ultimatum 
was  delivered  the  European  chancelleries  were  virtually  empty  of  the  men 
who  attended  to  the  affairs  of  state.  Ambassadors  and  ministers  every- 
where were  out  in  the  country  and  at  the  season  places  summering.  The 
German  emperor  was  on  his  wonted  trip  to  the  Northlands,  and  even 
Count  Berchtold,  the  Austro-Hungarian  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  was 
not  in  the  building  on  the  Ballhausplatz,  nor  even  in  Vienna.  It  seemed 
as  if  the  ultimatum  had  fallen  from  the  blue  sky.  For  a  day  governmental 
and  diplomatic  circles  everywhere  went  through  the  motion  of  coming 
to  wakefulness,  real  in  some  cases,  simulated  in  others,  and  then  diplomacy 
and  all  that  appertains  to  it  engaged  frantically  in  efforts  to  prevent  in 
the  last  minute  what  it  had  labored  and  intrigued  for  during  years. 


THE  GREAT  DEBACLE 

WHEN  Europe  next  occupied  itself  with  the  assassination  at 
Sarajevo  it  was  the  hard  terms  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  ulti- 
matum to  Serbia  that  attracted  attention.  Reasonable  men 
everywhere  felt  that  they  might  lead  to  war.  There  were  many  who 
could  not  see  why  the  blood  of  thousands,  as  it  was  then  viewed,  should 
be  spilled  for  the  murder  of  an  archduke  and  his  wife,  even  though 
they  were  Hapsburgs  and  the  prospective  sovereign  couple  of  a  World 
Power. 

The  ultimatum  expired  on  Saturday,  July  25,  at  six  p.  m.  Its 
worst  feature  really  was  that  it  demanded  of  the  Serbian  government 
that  in  its  official  publication  it  should  on  July  26th  publish  a  statement 
prepared  by  the  foreign  office  at  Vienna.  That  measure  was  punitive,  of 
course.  It  was  hardly  possible  that  the  Serbian  government  could  keep 
from  its  people  the  fact  that  it  had  been  humbled  into  the  dust,  as  govern- 
ments look  upon  such  things. 

Why  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  gave  its  ultimatum  just  that 
form  has  puzzled  many.  The  tenor  and  demands  of  the  instrtiment  could 
easily  be  given  that  interpretation  which  much  of  the  world  placed  uoon 
them  later  on  in  the  charge  that  Austro-Hungary  wanted  to  have  war 
with  Serbia  at  any  price.  The  circumstance  that  a  partial  mobilization 
of  the  Austro-Hungarian  army  had  already  been  ordered,  and  the  fact 
that  considerable  bodies  of  troops  were  already  on  the  borders  of  Serbia, 
could  not  but  serve  in  support  of  that  conclusion. 

Yet  the  actual  fact  is  that  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  hoped 
to  settle  its  differences  with  Belgrade  without  recourse  to  war.  The 
mobilization  which  it  ordered  was  a  purely  coercive  measure,  applied 
by  Vienna,  as  I  have  been  able  to  establish  to  at  least  my  own  satisfaction, 
so  that  the  Serbian  government  would  not  be  able  to  think  lightly  of  the 
intentions  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  government.  That  the  procedure  was 
reckless  in  the  extreme  is  true  enough.  Vienna  and  Berlin  felt  that  they 
could  still  afford  extravagances  of  this  sort.  I  say  Vienna  and  Berlin, 
because  the  German  government  has  seen  fit  to  assert  that  it  knew  nothing 
of  the  intentions  of  its  ally,  which  is  absurd,  of  course.* 


Since  the  writing  of  these  lines  this  has  been  definitely  established. 

57 


58  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

I  happen  to  know  that  the  German  ambassador  in  Vienna  was  fully  ac- 
quainted with  what  was  going  on,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  he  left  his  foreign 
office  in  the  dark.  More  likely  is  that  the  text  of  the  ultimatum  wa? 
submitted  to  the  government  in  Berlin  through  the  Austro-Hungarian 
envoy  at  that  capital. 

Six  years  before  Austria-Hungary  had  annexed  Bosnia  and  Herze- 
govina with  the  assistance  of  the  German  government.  That  assistance 
may  have  been  limited  to  an  assurance  on  the  part  of  the  German  govern- 
ment that  in  case  of  complications  arising  from  the  annexation  it  would 
stand  by  the  terms  of  the  treaty  of  alliance.  But  that,  naturally,  was 
all  the  assistance  Austria-Hungary  needed.  When  Isvolski  had  been 
won  over  in  the  manner  explained  before,  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany, 
moreover,  could  proceed  without  having  to  fear  anything.  So  long  as 
Russia,  self-appointed  guardian  of  all  the  Slavs  in  the  world,  had  been 
disposed  of,  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  could  be  incorporated  without  much 
of  a  risk.  The  annexation  was  no  affair  of  Great  Britain  nor  of  France 
so  long  as  primarily  it  benefitted  only  the  dual  monarchy,  with  whom 
both  governments  maintained  at  least  cordial  relations  despite  its  member- 
ship in  the  Triple  Alliance.  It  would  have  been  different  had  Germany 
made  the  annexation.  The  Triple  Entente,  so  far  as  Great  Britain  and 
France  were  concerned,  was  a  measure  against  Germany,  and  both  the 
British  and  French  governments  could  well  afford  to  be  on  especially  good 
terms  with  the  Austro-Hunsrarian  government,  which,  as  a  member  of 
the  already  very  shakv  Triple  Alliance,  might  yet  further  weaken  that 
pact,  eventually  leave  Germany  unallied  entirely.  But  of  this  more  fur- 
ther on. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  government  entertained  little  respect  for  the 
Serbian  government,  peonle  and  royal  family.  The  tariff  discriminations 
already  referred  to  could  leave  no  doubt  as  to  that.  Primarily,  however, 
it  was  the  great  disdain  for  the  Karageorgevitch — Kara-Yiiriik — family 
that  was  felt  in  Vienna,  that  led  to  the  rudeness  displayed  in  the  ultimatum. 

The  social  distinctions  drawn  in  royal  circles  are  many,  as  is  known. 
Upon  them  is  based  the  elaborate  system  of  etiauette  which  governs 
the  intercourse  within  this  caste.  The  fact  that  most  of  the  monarchs 
of  Europe  addressed  one  another  in  the  familiar  "thou"  form  has  little 
to  do  with  that,  though  the  uninitiated  mifrht  easilv  look  upon  this  practice 
as  proof  of  the  great  solidarity  sovereigns  and  their  families  are  supposed 
to  maintain. 

A  Question  of  Royal  Respectability 

The  Karageorgevitches  had  been  a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  royalty 
for  decades.    They  succeeded  the  Obrenovitches  by  means  of  assassina- 


A  QUESTION  OF  ROYAL  RESPECTABILITY  59 

tion  and  were  considered  unfit  members  of  the  family  of  kings  therefore, 
especially  since  the  Obrenovitch  family  was  credited  with  better  qualities 
than  its  rival,  that  of  Black  George.  The  founder  of  the  Obrenovitch 
dynasty  had  been  a  humble  Serb  peasant  who  had  distinguished  himself 
in  leadership  of  armed  bands  against  the  Turks.  The  original  Black 
George  was  a  man  of  a  different  type,  though  he  also  did  his  best  to 
make  the  lot  of  the  Turks  in  Serbia  anything  but  pleasant.  George 
was  a  gypsy,  hailing  from  Bosnia,  so  far  as  records  show.  The  story 
is  that  he  was  born  under  a  hedge  somewhere  in  the  Balkan  peninsula. 
Another  story  has  it  that  he  saw  the  light  of  day  first  in  a  gypsy  tent  pitched 
at  the  base  of  the  Theodosian  Wall  at  Stamboul.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the 
writer  one  day  visited  the  village  on  the  slopes  of  Mount  Vidosh,  near 
Sofia,  where  George  resided  in  a  hovel,  gypsy  fashion,  before  he  decided 
to  become  a  liberator  and  a  statesman.  In  those  days  he  herded  pigs 
now,  and  took  a  shot  at  Turks  then,  being  one  of  the  members  of  a 
band  of  the  variety  later  known  as  comitadjes. 

A  folklore  which  is  not  unfriendly  in  the  main  has  it  that  George 
earned  himself  the  sobriquet  Kara — black — for  a  number  of  crimes  of  a 
particularly  shocking  aspect.  It  is  said  that  he  shot  his  father,  raped 
his  sister  and  hung  his  brother.  In  extenuation  of  this  conduct  it  may 
be  said  that  such  crimes  were  nothing  unusual  among  the  lawless  elements 
in  the  peninsula,  which  only  too  often  made  the  presence  of  the  Turk 
the  mere  pretext  for  organizing  into  bands  of  robbers,  as  was  especially 
the  case  in  Serbia  in  those  days,  where  a  little  later  Karageorgevitch  and 
Obrenovitch  vied  with  one  another  in  cruelty  toward  Turk  and  Serb 
alike. 

All  of  this  would  have  been  well  had  it  not  been  that  King  Peter, 
as  late  as  1890-91,  worked,  like  any  other  common  individual,  for  a 
photographer  in  Vienna,  one  Charles  Scolik.  With  the  notion  held  in 
the  Austro-Hungarian  capital  that  royalty  is  something  indeed  sacrosanct 
these  things  did  not  all  harmonize.  So  it  came  that  King  Peter  was  looked 
upon  as  the  veriest  of  royal  upstarts.  To  make  the  Obrenovitches  feel 
that  they  were  vassals  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  crown  they  were  given 
a  large  annual  stipend  in  return  for  nothing  in  particular.  The  Kara- 
georgevitches,  on  the  other  hand,  received  such  an  income  from  the 
Russian  court. 

With  such  men  the  Austro-Hungarian  court,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  very  superior  aristocrats  in  the  Ballhausplatz  building,  on  the  other, 
were  not  inclined  to  be  any  too  diplomatic,  as  the  tariff  matter  had  already 
demonstrated.  Goaded  into  exasperation  by  the  activities  of  the  rather 
notorious  "Narodna  Odbrana"  and  other  Jugo-Slav  patriotic  organizations, 
of  which  the  assassination  of  the  archduke  was  but  the  climax,  the  Austro- 


60  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Hungarian  government  was  ready  to  treat  Serbia  in  the  manner  which 
has  ever  been  followed  by  the  powerful  government  in  its  dealings  with 
weaker  states,  especially  when  the  latter  were  generally  supposed  to  be 
somewhat  ''barbarian."  In  short,  the  attitude  of  the  dual  monarchy,  and 
most  of  its  non-Slav  constituents,  was  about  the  same  as  that  observed 
by  many  people  in  the  United  States  toward  Mexico  and  some  of  the  other 
Latin- American  republics.  All  would  have  been  well  had  it  not  been  that 
Sazonoff  was  just  then  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  and  that  the 
political  ulcer  of  Europe  was  ready  to  break. 

Men  who  know  this  situation  only  superficially  have  said  that  it  was 
Russia's  fixed  policy  to  get  to  Constantinople  by  the  Balkan  route,  that 
was  responsible  for  the  stiff-backedness  which  the  Serbian  government 
developed — almost  overnight.  To  some  extent  that  is  true,  but  the  weak 
and  vacillating  Czar  Nicholas  was  not  the  man  to  give  much  attention  to 
this  phase  of  Russian  expansion.  To  be  sure  it  was  his  foreign  minister, 
Sazonoff,  who  had  engineered  the  vicious  treaty  of  Bucharest,  1913,  which 
deprived  the  Bulgarians  of  a  great  deal  of  territory  to  which  they  had 
every  valid  claim,  and  which  took  from  them,  in  addition,  a  district  as 
Bulgarian  as  Maine  is  American — ^the  Dobrudja.  Needless  to  say,  this 
estranged  the  Bulgarian  people,  and  created  throughout  Southeast  Europe 
the  impression  that  Russia  proposed  marching  to  the  Dardanelles  via 
the  Balkan,  with  the  favored  Serbians  on  their  right  flank  of  advance 
and  with  the  Greeks  doing  a  similar  service  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. That  the  Rumanians  had  been  pleased  at  the  expense  of  the 
Bulgarians,  by  getting  the  Dobrudja,  was  interpreted  as  the  throwing  out 
of  a  fine  bit  of  bait.  It  had  a  very  sharp  and  strong  hook  in  it,  however, 
as  Senator  Marghiloman  explained  to  me.  That  hook  was  the  passing 
of  Rumania  under  Russian  suzerainty,  if  not  rule.  But  all  this  did  not 
dictate  the  moves  of  Sazonoff  just  then.  He  knew  well  enough  that  the 
conquest  of  the  Balkan  and  the  remainder  of  Turkey  of  Europe  was  not 
yet  something  to  which  Great  Britain  would  give  her  assent,  though  with 
the  French,  with  whom  he  dealt  most,  that  might  have  made  no  difference 
so  long  as  the  German  situation  was  taken  care  of.  For  that  enterprise  the 
world  in  Europe  was  not  yet  ripe. 


r 


The  Diplomatic  Mines  Are  Sprung 


The  fact  is,  as  I  will  show  better  later  on,  that  Sazonoff  instructed 
Belgrade  not  to  pay  much  attention  to  the  Austro-Hungarian  ultimatum. 
With  the  assurance  that  the  big  brother  in  the  North  was  coming  to 
help,  the  Serbian  government  had  no  reason  to  acquiesce  into  the  extreme 
and   insulting   demands   of   Austria-Hungary.     As   I   later  learned,   the 


l^HE  DIPLOMATIC  MINES  ARE  SPRUNG  61 

Austro-Hungarian  government  was  sure  that  Serbia  would  accept  her 
terms.  Baron  von  GiesHngen,  Austro-Hungarian  minister  at  Belgrade, 
was  under  the  impression,  even  sure,  that  the  ultimatum  would  have  the 
desired  effect.  But  he  was  ignorant  of  the  intentions  of  Sazonoff  and 
the  instructions  rushed  to  the  Serbian  government,  and  made  what,  under 
the  circumstances,  is  a  natural  mistake.  Had  Pashitch,  the  premier  and 
foreign  minister  of  Serbia,  given  him  a  tip  that  all  was  not  as  it  appeared 
on  the  surface,  the  minister  might  have  changed  his  tactics,  so  far  as  he 
could.  It  is  very  probable,  however,  that  neither  he,  nor  his  foreign 
office,  would  have  believed  the  Serbian  government.  Most  likely  such  an 
intimation  would  have  been  looked  upon  as  a  ruse.  There  is  also  the  cir- 
cumstance that  premiers  are  not  generally  allowed  to  speak  of  such  mat- 
ters. Thus  it  came  about  that  on  July  28  Austria-Hungary  declared  war 
on  Serbia. 

For  the  next  five  days  the  telegraph  wires  of  Europe  continued  to 
be  very  busy  trying  to  mend  matters.  There  were  meetings  of  crown 
councils  and  cabinets  everywhere.  In  the  chancelleries  the  midnight  oil 
was  burned.  Embassies  and  legations  were  the  scene  of  wildest  con- 
fusion. The  press  grew  excited,  and  the  public,  throughout  Central  Europe, 
stood  silent  in  awe.  Foreign  ministers  and  premiers  did  this  and  that, 
and  arrived  nowhere,  and  four  of  the  monarchs  of  Europe,  William, 
George,  Nicholas  and  Francis  Joseph,  engaged  in  as  futile  an  exchange 
of  telegrams  as  could  be  imagined.  The  German  emperor  became  the  center 
of  this.  He  tried,  and  tried  honestly,  to  avert  the  catastrophe  that  was 
imminent.  I  realize  fully  that  it  will  be  considered  daring  to  defend 
William  II  in  that  respect,  yet  a  fact  is  a  fact.  As  George  Bernard  Shaw 
put  it  recently: 

"It  is  out  of  the  question  to  present  the  truth  concerning  a  war 
to  those  who  must  chiefly  bear  the  burden  of  it.  Yet  that  should  be  done, 
must  be  done,  if  the  public  is  ever  to  fully  realize  its  own  position." 

It  is  utterly  futile  to  attempt  the  proving  of  anything  in  war  by 
means  of  the  vari-colored  books,  so-called  "blue"  books,  which  govern- 
ments are  in  the  habit  of  issuing  after  they  have  entered  upon  a  martial 
adventure.  The  writer  has  reached  that  conclusion  after  studying,  for 
a  matter  of  five  years  almost,  the  British  white,  Russian  orange,  French 
yellow,  German  white,  Belgian  grey,  Austro-Hungarian  red  and  United 
States  white  papers. 

The  general  public  cannot  be  expected  to  understand,  is  not  per- 
mitted to  understand,  in  fact,  what  the  purpose  of  these  specious  docu- 
ments is.  The  vari-colored  books  are  issued  by  the  governments  concerned 
for  the  purpose  of  exonerating  them  before  their  own  publics,  putting 
the  enemy  in  as  bad  a  light  as  possible  and  influencing  the  public  opinion 


62  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

of  the  world.  That  is  their  sole  purpose,  and  there  is  no  other.  At  the 
same  time  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  serious  men,  professors  of  history 
among  them,  can  take  such  garbled  accounts  as  throwing  really  a  "strong" 
light  on  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  this  or  that  government.  The  documents 
I  have  named  and  their  supplements  contain  nearly  700  major  communi- 
cations. Yet  not  a  single  one  of  them  speaks  of  what  had  transpired  before 
the  situation  was  critical.  The  obligations  of  one  state  to  another,  as 
caused  by  understandings  and  alliances,  understood  by  the  public,  or  secret, 
which  is  more  important,  are  not  even  touched  upon.  Nor  is  there  among 
this  mass  of  so-called  evidence  so  much  as  an  allusion  to  an  instruction 
of  a  diplomatic  envoy  that  made  for  war  in  case  orders  furthering  peace 
should  not  bring  good  results.  The  reasonable  human  being  has  every 
right  to  think  that  a  government  would  at  least  include,  if  it  were  honest 
in  its  so-called  defense,  such  instructions  to  ambassadors  and  suggestions 
to  allied  governments  as  would  be  considered  perfectly  justified  in  case 
a  bellicose  power  conducted  itself  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  war  a 
strong  eventuality. 

But  nothing  of  the  sort  is  done  in  these  "papers."  Their  authors 
point  to  themselves  with  seeming  satisfaction  as  the  government  or  group 
which  alone  tried  to  avert  the  calamity  of  war.  The  British  white  book 
makes  no  reference  to  a  fact,  which  Lord  Haldane  had  already  presented 
to  the  German  government  as  late  as  1912,  to  wit:  That  there  was  a 
definite  understanding  of  the  entente  cordiale  that  Great  Britain  would 
come  to  the  aid  of  France  in  case  there  was  an  attack  made  upon  her. 
That  much,  at  least,  Haldane  had  made  perfectly  clear  to  Berlin  by  his 
attitude  in  refusing  to  agree  to  it  that  in  case  of  war  between  Germany 
and  France  Great  Britain  would  remain  neutral. 

Sir  Edward  Grey  and  other  British  statesmen  have  since  then  asserted 
that  the  British  government  had  made  no  promise  to  France  of  military 
aid  of  any  sort  and  that  it  was  the  violation  of  the  neutrality  of  Belgium 
that  drove  Great  Britain  into  the  war.  How  the  world  can  be  expected 
to  believe  that  is  hard  to  see.  Haldane  had  admitted  that  under  certain 
conditions  Great  Britain  would  go  to  war  in  the  interest  of  France,  and 
he  admitted  it  in  an  endeavor  to  bring  Germany  to  reason.  His  motive 
was  the  best.  But  apart  from  all  that,  may  we  not  ask  what  was  the 
purpose  of  the  entente  cordiale  if  it  was  not,  at  least,  an  agreement  of  a 
defensive-alliance  character?  That  is  the  very  least  upon  which  govern- 
ments have  in  the  past  been  willing  to  give  their  foreign  relations  that 
aspect  which  an  entente  between  powers  creates.  The  government  that 
would  complacently  permit  itself  to  be  known  as  the  close  friend  of 
another  government  without  having  more  than  the  friendship  and  esteem 
of  another  nation  in  the  bargain  would  be  very  foolish,  to  say  the  least. 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  MINES  ARE  SPRUNG  63 

Such  a  friendship  would  be  seriously  questioned  by  other  powers,  who, 
misunderstanding  this  platonic  love,  would  rightly  cast  about  for  an  ally 
to  meet  the  day  when  the  purely  altruistic  union  of  the  others  would  sud- 
denly unmask  itself  as  something  entirely  different.  Surely,  British  states- 
men expect  too  much  from  this  gullible  world  when  they  demand  that 
this  fairy  tale  of  theirs  be  accepted  as  presented. 

The  Terms  of  the  Entente  Cordiale 

The  fact  of  the  matter  was  that  the  British  government  had  promised 
France  to  side  with  her  in  a  war  against  Germany  under  any  circumstances. 
The  mobilization  ordered  by  the  British  government  was  a  partial  mobiliz- 
ation in  name  only  and  was  meant  for  an  attack  on  Germany  no  matter 
whether  the  German  army  attacked  France  through  Belgium  and  Luxem- 
burg or  through  Alsace-Lorraine,  because  such  was  the  import  and  purpose 
of  the  entente  cordiale.  This  and  the  fact  that  there  was  in  force  an 
entente  between  Great  Britain  and  Russia  and  an  alliance  between  Russia 
and  France,  and  the  further  fact  that  Russia  would  not  consent  to  a 
localization  or  limitation  of  the  trouble  on  the  Danube  to  letting  it  remain 
an  issue  between  Austria-Hungary  and  Serbia  made  the  Great  War 
inevitable.  / 

It  seems  unreasonable  to  criticize  for  its  own  sake  the  attitude  of 
the  Russian  government  in  regard  to  Austria-Hungary's  unreasonable 
demands  upon  Serbia.  At  the  same  time,  so  far  as  Russia  and  Germany 
were  concerned,  the  possibilities  for  peace  were  not  yet  exhausted,  as  has 
been  shown  by  the  failure  of  Czar  Nicholas  to  get  his  orders  to  his  minister 
of  war.  General  Soukhomlinoff,  carried  out  so  that  the  general  mobiliza- 
tion under  way  might  be  halted.  A  sane  diplomacy,  willing  to  preserve 
the  peace  of  the  world,  would  have  served  notice  upon  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  government  that  measures  taken  against  Serbia  would  have  to 
be  accounted  for  and  their  consequence  borne.  As  it  was,  the  diplomacy 
of  Europe  and  Great  Britain  was  on  the  single  track  of  maneuvering  for 
war,  in  the  case  of  some  governments;  in  the  case  of  others  treaty  obli- 
gations and  prestige  drove  their  nations  over  the  precipice. 

Great  Britain  alone  could  have  prevented  the  Great  War.  Her  special 
position  gave  her  that  power  and  conferred  upon  her  that  duty.  Had 
Sir  Edward  Grey  frankly  informed  the  German  government  the  catas- 
trophe might  have  been  averted.  I  say  might  have  been  averted  for  the 
reason  that  I  am  not  so  sure  that  the  German  government  would  not  have 
run  the  risk  for  all  that.  In  Germany  the  very  thought  of  a  big  navy  had, 
as  has  been  the  case  before,  created  in  many  the  impression  that  such  a 
sea  power  was  already  in  existence.     The  contemplation  of   the  thing 


64  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

that  was  to  be,  had  fired  the  brains  of  many  with  a  wild  desire  to  sec 
it  used. 

But  Great  Britain  did  nothing  of  the  sort.  Prince  Lichnowski,  who 
only  recently  published  his  very  interesting  but  quite  foolish  memoirs 
concerning  his  stay  in  London  as  German  ambassador,  was  one  of  those 
German  diplomatists  who  thought  their  wishes  and  hopes  to  be  reality. 
Edward  Grey  had  assured  him  on  many  occasions  that  Great  Britain  was 
not  as  absolutely  committed  to  France  as  was  believed.  The  German 
ambassador  believed  that,  and  has  since  then  been  paid  the  compliment 
by  Mr.  Shaw  that  he  was  too  honest  a  man  to  deal  with  the  British 
premier,  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  credited  Sir  Edward  with  the 
qualities  he  himself  had.  I  am  not  so  sure  that  this  is  in  accord  with  the 
facts.  In  what  particular  respect  Sir  Edward  was  unusually  dishonest,  for 
a  politician,  has  not  been  shown.  To  leave  Lichnowski  under  the  impres- 
sion that  Great  Britain  had  a  free  hand  in  regard  to  France  was  perfectly 
lionest  when  viewed  in  the  light  of  accepted  diplomatic  morality.  Not 
to  leave  the  German  ambassador  in  these  false  hopes  would  have  been 
an  instance  of  altruistic  conduct,  not  only  toward  Germany  but  to  the 
world  as  well.  Governments,  as  a  rule,  are  expected  to  be  altruistic 
only  with  themselves.    Most  of  them  follow  that  principle  in  statecraft. 

Lichnowski  actually  believed  that  Great  Britain  would  stay  out  of 
the  war.  He  has  since  then  admitted  this  to  the  extent  of  confessing 
that  he  thought  Great  Britain  would  come  to  the  aid  of  France  only  in 
case  the  neutrality  of  Belgium  was  violated.  There  was  a  time,  however, 
when  he  was  positive  that  the  British  government  would  on  no  account 
go  to  war  with  Germany — entente  or  no. 

Of  the  great  simplicity  of  Prince  Lichnowski,  and  his  need-born 
optimism  I  have  found  telling  corroboration  in  a  book  on  official  pre-war 
correspondence,  suppressed  by  the  publisher  thereof.  I  refer  to  von 
Mach's  "Diplomatic  Documents  Relating  to  the  Outbreak  of  the  European 
War."     Pages  593-94: 

German  Ambassador  at  London  to  the  German  Imperial 
Chancellor,  dated  1st  August,  1914. 

"Sir  Edward  Grey  has  just  called  me  to  the  telephone  and 
has  asked  me  whether  I  thought  I  could  declare  that,  in  the  event 
of  France  remaining  neutral  in  a  German-Russian  war,  we  would 
not  attack  the  French.  I  told  him  that  I  believed  I  could  assume 
responsibility  for  this.  Lichnowski." 

Pages  594-95 : 

His  Majesty  King  George  to  His  Majesty  the  Emperor 
William,  dated  1st  August,  1914. 

"In  answer  to  your  telegram,  which  has  just  been  received, 
I  believe  that  there  must  be  a  misunderstanding  with  regard  to  a 


THE  TERMS  OF  THE  BNTBNTB  CORDIALB  65 

suggestion  which  was  made  in  a  friendly  conversation  between 
Prince  Lichnowski  and  Sir  Edward  Grey  when  they  were  dis- 
cussing how  an  actual  conflict  between  the  German  and  French 
armies  might  be  avoided,  so  long  as  there  is  still  a  possibility  of 
an  agreement  being  arrived  at  between  Austria  and  Russia.  Sir 
Edward  Grey  will  see  Prince  Lichnowski  early  tomorrow  morn- 
ing in  order  to  ascertain  whether  there  is  any  misunderstanding 
on  his  side.  Gkorg^." 

Page  595 :  *  ' 

German  Ambassador  at  London  to  the  German  Imperial 
Chancellor,  dated  2nd  August,  1914. 

"The  suggestions  of  Sir  Edward  Grey  based  on  the  desire 
of  creating  the  possibility  of  lasting  neutrality  on  the  part  of 
England  were  made  without  any  previous  inquiry  of  France  and 
without  knowledge  of  the  mobilization,  and  have  since  been  given 
up  as  quite  impracticable.  Lichnowski." 

Since  the  text  of  the  telegrams,  the  dates  and  the  general  aspect  of 
the  situation  then  prevailing  are  more  eloquent  than  any  explanation 
possibly  could  be,  the  reader  is  left  to  draw  his  own  conclusions,  though 
attention  is  directed  to  the  apologetic  tone  of  Lichnowski's  telegram  of 
August  2,  in  which  he  explains  for  Sir  Edward  Grey  what  no  longer 
needed  such  treatment. 


The  Attitude  of  Prince  Lichnowski 

Far  more  eloquent  is  something  which  occurred  about  noon  on  July  30. 
With  Lichnowski  was  at  the  time  Dr.  Richard  von  Kuhlmann,  subse- 
quently minister  at  The  Hague  and  ambassador  at  Constantinople  and 
later  state  secretary  for  foreign  affairs.  Kiihlmann  was  then  the  conseiller 
of  the  German  ambassador  to  the  court  of  St.  James,  and  as  such  had  to 
be  consulted  by  Prince  Lichnowski  much  of  tener  than  this  rich,  well-trained 
and  somewhat  overbearing  diplomatist  found  agreeable.  Kiihlmann  had 
the  nasty  habit  of  looking  facts  in  the  face.  He  was  of  the  **new  school" 
of  German  diplomatists  and  decidedly  Anglophile,  yet  not  blindly  so  in 
matters  of  duty. 

The  conseiller  had  just  discussed  with  the  ambassador  what  Great 
Britain  might  do — would  do,  so  far  as  Kiihlmann's  judgment  went.  He 
was  about  to  leave  when  the  doorman  announced  to  Prince  Lichnowski 
that  Captain  von  Miiller,  the  embassy's  naval  attache,  was  very  urgent 
in  his  desire  to  be  received.  The  ambassador  was  not  edified  by  this. 
He  looked  upon  the  attache  as  a  man  with  alarmist  leaning,  and  felt 
that  he  would  bring  another  series  of  bad  tidings.    After  saying  as  much 


66  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

to  Kiihlmann,  the  ambassador  told  the  doorman  to  invite  the  captain  to 
come  in. 

Evidently  the  naval  attache  had  news  of  importance.  To  some 
remark  of  Lichnowski's  to  that  effect  he  laid  on  the  table  what  turned 
out  to  be  a  report  to  the  person  of  the  emperor.  Under  pressing  conditions, 
or  when  the  subject  was  important  enough,  such  reports  were  made  by 
military  and  naval  attaches. 

The  ambassador  read  the  report,  then  looked  up  at  the  attache  and 
at  Kiihlmann  with  a  pained  expression  on  his  face. 

"My  dear  captain!"  he  said  as  he  handed  the  paper  to  Kiihlmann. 
"This  report  cannot  be  sent.  I  have  been  trying  hard  to  keep  this  country 
and  Germany  at  peace,  and  have  almost  succeeded.  All  my  work  will 
be  in  vain  in  case  this  report  gets  to  His  Majesty.  I  beg  you  not  to 
send  it." 

Captain  von  Miiller  could  not  see  it  that  way.  His  report  said  that 
he  had  just  learned  that  the  mobilization  orders  of  the  British  govern- 
ment were  of  such  a  nature  that  the  immediate  general  use  of  the  naval 
and  military  establishments  was  contemplated.  It  was  certain  also,  said 
the  report,  that  Great  Britain  proposed  coming  to  the  assistance  of  France 
in  any  event.  Whether  Germany  attacked  France  through  Alsace-Lorraine, 
Luxembourg  or  Belgium  would  make  no  difference. 

The  German  naval  attache  had  his  authority  for  these  statements. 
To  him  this  seemed  reliable  enough,  but  Prince  Lichnowski  thought  the 
assertions  of  the  report  so  out  of  harmony  with  the  facts,  as  he  thought 
of  them,  that  he  questioned  the  accuracy  of  the  information.  He  asked 
Conseiller  Kiihlmann  what  his  opinion  was  and  received  a  non-committal 
reply.  It  was  plain  to  the  attache  that  Kuhlmann  did  not  want  to 
interfere,  but  he,  nevertheless,  was  inclined  to  side  with  the  report. 

To  make  a  long  story  short.  Captain  von  Miiller  was  prevailed  upon 
not  to  dispatch  the  report  immediately,  as  he  had  intended,  but  to  wait  for 
further  developments.  When,  finally,  the  ambassador  consented  to  the 
forwarding  of  the  telegram,  having  then  been  convinced  that  the  attache 
was  right,  it  was  too  late.  A  few  hours  before  the  British  government 
had  given  orders  to  the  telegraph  service  that  no  more  dispatches  in 
code  from  the  German  and  Austro-Hungarian  embassies  were  to  be  ac- 
cepted. 

Lichnowski  in  this  manner  held  up  the  means  that  might  have  caused 
the  men  in  Berlin  to  yet  change  their  course.  The  report  itself  was  not 
authoritative,  to  be  sure,  but  it  would  have  been  a  warning.  It  might 
have  accomplished  more  than  a  statement  from  the  British  premier,  because 
such  a  statement  from  Sir  Edward  direct  might  have  caused  the  Berlin 
government  to  be  more  touchy  than  ever,  while  the  same  notice  from  the 


THE  ATTITUDE  OF  PRINCE  UCHNOWSKI  67 

German  naval  attache  at  London,  a  man  of  high  standing,  would  have 
appealed  more  to  common  sense  than  to  the  susceptibilities  of  the  pride  of 
monarchs  and  ministers. 

The  reader  may  ask  how  I  come  to  know  the  details  of  the  case. 
My  informants  are  Captain  von  Miiller  himself.  Dr.  Richard  von  Kiihl- 
mann,  Baron  Carl  von  Giskra,  at  that  time  Austro-Hungarian  minister  at 
The  Hague,  and  a  neutral  diplomatist  at  London  whose  name  I  am  not 
permitted  to  give. 

Prince  Lichnowski  has  made  no  mention  of  this  incident  and  its 
features  in  the  pamphlet  of  self-defense  published  by  him  in  Switzerland, 
nor  has  he  at  all  intimated  to  what  extent  the  wool  was  pulled  over  his 
eyes  by  Sir  Edward  Grey — all  of  which  was  natural  enough  in  the 
case  of  a  man  who  smarted  more  under  the  treatment  that  was  given 
him  at  home,  when  his  mission  was  terminated  by  a  fiasco,  than  he  resented 
the  masterly  manner  in  which  the  British  foreign  minister  convinced  him 
that  black  was  white. 

Meanwhile,  the  wires  of  Europe  were  hot  with  frantic  endeavors  to 
avert  the  highly  imminent  war.  Emperor  William  was  wiring  in  all 
directions.  He  pleaded  with  Czar  Nicholas,  and  his  cousin.  King  George, 
but  did  little  enough  to  bring  Austria-Hungary  to  her  senses.*  In  a  large 
measure  that  was  due  to  the  fact  that  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  was  no 
longer  the  actual  head  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  government.  Nominally 
still  the  chief  of  that  government,  the  old  man  was  living  now  entirely  in 
the  past — a  past  in  which  monarchs  made  war  according  to  personal 
formula.  Count  Berchtold  had  persuaded  him  that  Serbia  deserved  no 
better  than  she  was  getting,  and  there  was  in  Belgrade  no  brother 
monarch  in  whom  old  Francis  Joseph  would  have  taken  an  interest 
sufficiently  great  to  cause  him  to  occupy  himself  with  the  ultimatum  from 
that  angle.  The  old  emperor,  in  addition,  had  too  fine  an  opinion  of 
the  military  strength  of  his  German  ally  to  worry  over  the  possibility 
of  war,  and  when  the  moment  came  that  war  was  inevitable  he  calmly 
left  affairs  in  the  hands  of  the  same  ally.  That  there  was  some  corre- 
spondence on  the  subject  of  the  ultimatum  to  Serbia  between  the  two 
emperors  is  most  likely.  It  has  not  been  published,  however.  Allied 
rulers  and  allied  governments,  necessarily,  do  not  include  their  own  cor- 
respondence in  the  "papers"  they  afterward  publish. 

That  the  German  government  stood  so  valiantly  by  Austria-Hungary 
in  those  days  has  puzzled  a  good  many  impartial  observers.  An  alliance 
of  defense  leaves  usually  some  way  out  for  the  signatory  who  may  con- 


*  The  recent  publication  of  what  is  known  as  the  "Kautsky"  papers,  dealing  with  this  phase 
of  relations  between  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  and  Emperor  William  and  his  ministers, 
corroborates  this  in  a  most  absolute  manner. 


68  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

sider  that  the  co-signatory  had  been  the  aggressor  in  an  imprudent  de- 
gree. Italy  did  this  later  on,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the 
German  government  could  not  have  advanced  .the  same  contention  and 
in  this  manner,  with  all  honor  saved,  left  Austria-Hungary  at  the  mercy 
of  the  Russians.  There  are  limits  even  to  loyalty,  and  generally  these 
limits  are  prescribed  by  the  self-interest  of  the  other  party. 

It  must  be  accepted,  therefore,  that  the  German  government  had  much 
in  common  with  the  Austro-Hungarian  government.  But  it  was  not  in 
Serbia  itself  where  these  interests  met.  In  fact,  so  far  as  Serbia  was 
directly  concerned  German  and  Austro-Hungarian  interests  were  opposed. 
When  the  government  in  Vienna  sanctioned  the  tariff  war  upon  vSerbia 
it  was  Germany  which  bought  from  the  Serbs  most  of  what  they  could 
export,  and  so  long  as  the  German  government  supported  Russia  on 
the  Balkan  as  against  Austria-Hungary,  Belgrade  had  staunch  friends  in 
Berlin.  The  support  given  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  by  the 
German  government  had  its  causal  origin  in  the  general  political  situation 
in  Europe. 

When  Emperor  William  and  his  advisors  stood  for  the  localization 
of  the  Serbian-Austro-Hungarian  difficulty  they  had  in  mind  the  curb 
that  had  to  be  placed  upon  Russian  designs  southward  and  southwestward. 
It  was  Pan- Slavism  that  bothered  Berlin.  The  Slavs  of  Austria  and 
Hungary  and  those  in  the  Balkans  were  gravitating  toward  Russia.  A 
declaration  of  war  by  the  Russian  government  against  Austria-Hungary 
would  have  caused  the  latter  to  fall  to  pieces  if  not  supported  by  the 
German  army,  and  overnight  Russia  would  have  had  Germanic  Europe 
at  her  mercy  in  that  event.  Just  as  the  British  had  their  "German  peril" 
so  had  the  Germans  their  "russische  Gefahr" — ^Russian  peril.  To  meet 
that  peril  before  Russia  could  complete  her  strategic  railroads  close  to 
the  German  and  Austro-Hungarian  borders  and  carry  through  the  reor- 
ganization of  her  increased  army  was  considered  the  paramount  duty 
by  the  men  in  Berlin.  If  that  could  be  accomplished  diplomatically  so 
much  the  better;  if  it  had  to  be  done  on  the  field  of  battle  then,  as 
most  Germans  thought,  the  inevitable  had  to  be  faced  a  little  ahead  of 
time — a  scant  twelve  months  at  that,  as  the  situation  was  viewed. 

Germany  was  not  by  any  means  unanimous  in  this  matter.  As 
stated  before,  there  were  many  who  looked  upon  Austria-Hungary  as  a 
poor  sort  of  ally.  From  the  military  point  of  view  the  dual  monarchy 
was  accepted  by  some  of  the  leading  German  statesmen  as  a  charge 
rather  than  a  gain.  In  that  respect  Austria-Hungary  was  not  much  better 
than  Italy,  as  these  men  thought. 

On  the  whole  the  Junker  element  of  Prussia,  then  quite  the  strongest 
factor  in  the  German  imperial  government,  was  rather  Russophile.    And 


THE  ATTITUDE  OF  PRINCE  LICHNOWSKI  69 

it  was  this  honestly.  Being  reactionaries  mostly,  the  Prussian  Junkers 
looked  upon  the  control  of  the  Russian  masses  by  a  handful  of  autocrats 
at  St.  Petersburg  with  admiration.  East  of  the  Elbe  they  had  social 
standards  that  differed  from  Russian  social  standards  only  in  so  far  as 
they  were  more  genuinely  paternal.  So  far  as  the  proletariat  was  concerned 
the  Russian  government  was  a  neglectful  father,  while  the  Prussian  gov- 
ernment, equally  stern  and  absolute,  was  really  mindful  of  at  least  the 
physical  wants  of  the  governed. 

It  was  the  Junker  element  of  Germany  which  had  in  the  past  exam- 
ined critically  the  Triple  Alliance  and  subjected  it  to  much  scrutiny.  Since 
this  group  thought  in  terms  of  "Realpolitik"  it  was  but  natural  that  it 
came  to  oppose  the  Austrophiles  in  Germany.  For  many  years  before 
the  War  Russian  and  Austro-Hungarian  interests  had  been  in  hostile 
contact  in  the  Balkans.  Russia  wanted  to  get  to  the  Mediterranean  by 
way  of  Constantinople  and  the  straits  and  thought  the  incorporation  of 
the  Balkan  Slavs  a  pleasant  and  profitable  incident  to  this,  while  Austria- 
Hungary  wanted  to  prevent  these  very  things,  feeling  that  the  loss  of 
her  own  Slav  population  meant  the  doom  of  the  state.  The  Slavs  in 
the  dual  monarchy  were  the  keystone  of  the  state,  holding  up  the  German- 
Austrian  and  Hungarian  half-arches.  To  lose  that  keystone  was  synony- 
mous with  the  end  of  the  monarchy,  and  might  even  lead  to  Russian 
suzerainty  in  all  of  Austria-Hungary.  The  Russian  peril  was  much  more 
of  a  reality  to  Central  Europe  than  the  German  peril  was  that  to  Great 
Britain. 

There  were  men  in  Germany  who  wished  to  placate  that  peril.  In 
Austria  and  Hungary  that  element  was  wholly  absent.  The  Junker  party 
of  Prussia  was  forever  for  a  rapprochement  with  Russia,  but  made  little 
progress  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  Liberals  of  Germany  did  not  propose 
having  their  country  Russified  in  addition  to  being  Prussianized.  Liberal 
South  Germany  was  consistently  pro-Austrian  for  no  other  reason  and 
was  mainly  responsible  for  the  continuation  of  Austrophile  politics  in 
Berlin,  rendering  futile  in  this  manner  the  "orientation  toward  the  East" 
which  the  Junkers,  as  the  better  politicians,  persistently  advocated.  Social 
Russia  was  a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  the  German  Liberals,  as  it  was  in 
those  of  progressives  everywhere.  On  the  one  hand  this  led  to  the 
cementing  of  the  Triple  Entente,  and  on  the  other  to  the  reinforcement  of 
the  Triple  Alliance,  so  far  as  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  were  con- 
cerned. To  the  claim  of  the  Junkers  that  Austrophilism  would  in  the 
end  prove  the  undoing  of  the  German  empire,  the  Liberals  replied  that 
closer  relations  with  Russia  would  do  the  same  thing  socio-politically. 
Thus  it^came  about  that  the  German  government  gave  its  support  to  the 
Austro-Hungarian  government  in  its  program  of  action  in  Serbia. 


;0  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

We  must  now  turn  to  Petrograd — then  still  St.  Petersburg — to  see 
what  was  taking  place  there.  The  trial  of  General  Yanushkevitch,  chief 
of  staflF  of  the  Russian  army,  during  the  initial  phases  of  the  War,  has 
established  that  he  did  not  carry  out  the  orders  given  him  by  Emperor 
Nicholas.  Backed  by  Minister  of  War  General  SoukhomlinofF,  by  Grand 
Duke  Nicholai  Nicholaievitch  and  by  Sazonoff,  the  chief  of  staff  felt  him- 
self free  to  lie  to  his  imperial  master,  the  czar.  Nicholas  had  learned 
from  Emperor  William,  Count  Pourtales,  the  German  ambassador  at  St. 
Petersburg,  and  the  German  military  attache  that  the  Russian  mobilization 
was  not  a  partial  one,  as  had  been  ordered,  but  one  of  so  general  a  char- 
acter that  the  German  government  considered  it  a  menace.  At  first  Czar 
Nicholas  was  not  inclined  to  pay  much  attention  to  the  claim  of  the 
Germans,  but  finally  decided  to  ascertain  whether  or  no,  after  all,  there 
was  some  truth  in  what  he  had  heard.  He  called  General  Yanushkevitch 
to  the  telephone  and  questioned  him,  to  be  told  that  the  mobilization  was 
indeed  a  partial  one.  It  was  from  this  angle  that  Czar  Nicholas  pursued 
his  correspondence  with  Emperor  William.  Meanwhile  the  general 
mobilization  continued,  and  left  the  German  emperor  in  no  other  position 
than  to  assume  that  his  brother  monarch  in  St.  Petersburg  was  lying  to 
him.  Berlin  was  well  informed  on  what  the  Russian  general  staflF  was 
doing.  It  had  many  friends  in  Russia  and  the  Russian  army — many  of 
them  Baltic  Germans,  who  in  the  past  had  been  zealous  promoters  of  a 
Russo-German  entente.  The  news  which  these  managed  to  get  to  the 
German  diplomatic  mission  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  through  that  agency 
to  Berlin,  was  a  sweeping  contradiction  of  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the 
telegrams  Czar  Nicholas  was  sending  to  Emperor  William. 

With  every  thought  only  on  war  and  with  the  militarists  supreme  by 
row,  there  was  no  longer  any  hope  that  diplomacy  might  effect  a  concilia- 
tion. The  mobilization  of  Russia  was  general  and  was  making  rapid 
headway,  and  Germany  saw  herself  obliged  to  follow  suit.  The  attitude 
of  Paris  and  London  was  as  menacing  as  that  of  St.  Petersburg,  and 
there  was  now  no  time  for  any  other  move  than  to  stand  pat  by  Austria- 
Hungary. 

The  Conduct  of  a  Mad  Militarist 

To  German  apologies  in  regard  to  this  situation  it  has  often  been 
remarked  that  the  German  government  could  have  mobilized  its  army, 
concentrated  it  along  the  Russo-German  border  and  then  awaited  develop- 
ments. From  the  peace  point  of  view  that  is  indeed  a  good  argument. 
Two  parties  not  willing  to  fight  might  do  that;  eager  to  fight  they  would 
not  do  it,  of  course.    In  their  mobilization  the  Russians  had  quite  a  start 


THE  CONDUCT  OF  A  MAD  MILITARIST  71 

over  the  Germans.  It  is  not  good  policy  when  war  is  imminent  to  wait 
until  the  other  party  has  every  man  in  the  field;  it  would  not  have  been 
good  policy  for  the  Germans  to  do  this  in  this  instance,  since  the  Russian 
army  was  numerically  much  the  superior  of  the  German.  Nor  would  it 
have  been  easy  for  the  German  government  to  explain  later  on  that  it  per- 
mitted all  initial  advantages  of  war  to  sHp  into  the  hands  of  the  Russians 
by  a  conciliatory  attitude  that  might  not  have  changed  the  situation  at  all  in 
the  end.  From  that  angle  the  German  government  acted  indeed  on  the 
defensive.  Allowances  must  be  made  for  a  man,  Emperor  William  in 
this  instance,  who  as  chief  executive  of  a  nation  receives  from  another 
chief  executive  assurances  that  bear  the  stamp  of  sincerity,  because  they 
were  sincere,  while  from  his  own  agents  he  gets  information  that  the 
preparations  for  war  are  proceeding  on  a  general  scale  at  maximum 
speed. 

The  case  of  General  Yanushkevitch  is  of  more  than  incidental  inter- 
est. It  has  been  said  that  he  was  a  mad  militarist  and  Germanophobe 
and  that  for  this  reason  he  took  the  making  of  war  into  his  own  hands,  by 
telling  the  czar  that  a  partial  mobilization  was  going  on,  when  he  knew 
that  a  general  mobilization  was  in  progress.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Czar 
Nicholas  was  under  that  impression  to  the  very  last,  though  as  yet  it  has 
not  been  explained  how  the  news  was  ultimately  broken  to  him.  There 
is  reason  to  believe  that  much  would  have  been  different  had  the  facts 
in  regard  to  mobilization  in  Russia,  as  they  reached  Berlin,  coincided  with 
the  conciliatory  and  pacific  spirit  of  Czar  Nicholas'  telegrams  to  the 
German  emperor.  Minds  would  have  sufficiently  cooled  off  to  permit  the 
taking  of  stock,  and  the  European  War  might  have  still  been  avoided. 
That  it  would  have  been  avoided  seems  a  reckless  statement  under  the 
circumstances ;  at  any  rate,  reason  would  have  been  given  a  chance. 

Though  M.  Sazonoff  himself  has  been  one  of  those  who  have  claimed 
that  General  Yanushkevitch  was  solely  responsible  for  the  extent  of  the 
Russian  mobilization,  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  assume  for  even  a  moment 
that  such  was  the  case.  While  the  credulity  of  the  world  public  has  ever 
been  great,  there  are  times  when  those  presuming  upon  it  go  a  little 
too  far.  M.  Sazonoff  knew  that  the  chief  of  staff  had  lied  to  the  czar, 
as  did  General  Soukhomlinoff,  the  minister  of  war,  and  Grand  Duke 
Nicholai  Nicholaievitch,  the  Russian  commander  in  chief.  Yet  even  these 
could  not  shoulder  so  tremendous  a  responsibility  without  assurances  that, 
come  what  might,  France  and  Great  Britain  would  support  every  act  of 
theirs.  The  men  who  actually  had  the  war  machine  in  hand,  so  far  as 
contact  between  Russia  and  France  and  England  was  concerned,  were: 
Sir  George  Buchanan,  the  British  ambassador  at  Petrograd;  M.  Paleo- 
logue,  the  French  ambassador  at  the  same  capital;  Count  Benckendorff, 


72  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  Russian  ambassador  at  London,  and  M.  Isvolski,  the  Russian  ambas- 
sador at  Paris.  Needless  to  say,  the  leaders  of  the  British  and  French 
governments  were  the  source  of  their  authority. 

I  make  this  statement  on  the  strength  of  information  which  reached 
me  in  Constantinople.  M.  N.  de  Giers,  the  Russian  ambassador  at  that 
point,  maintained  the  friendliest  relations  with  the  Bulgarian  legation,  then 
in  charge  of  M.  Koulocheff,  a  man  of  strong  Russophile  tendencies, 
who  in  those  days  was  anything  but  a  friend  of  the  Germans  and  Turks. 
Mons.  de  Giers,  oddly  enough,  was  strongly  pro-German,  and  spoke  of 
the  international  war  camarilla  in  St.  Petersburg  in  terms  that  were  not 
exactly  flattering.  De  Giers  was  rather  Anglophobe  and  doubted  that 
Great  Britain  would  ever  do  anything  to  place  Russia  in  possession  of 
Constantinople — a  rather  sound  conclusion  with  which  M.  Koulocheflf 
begged  to  differ.  The  Bulgarian  minister  thought  otherwise.  He  saw 
the  future  of  his  own  country  in  the  light  of  Pan-Slavism  and  the  eradica- 
tion of  the  Turks  and  Germans  even  after  his  country  had  become  an 
ally  of  theirs.  He  was  a  Russophile  of  the  subservient  type,  and  for  that 
reason  always  well  informed  on  affairs  in  Russia. 

In  this  connection  I  must  state  that  Sir  George  Buchanan  was  the 
leader  of  this  bloody  combination  in  Petrograd,  while  M.  Isvolski  worked 
most  of  the  wires  abroad.  Isvolski  had  been  somewhat  of  a  friend  of 
the  Germans  at  one  time.  Of  the  Austrians  he  was  rather  fond,  especially 
of  their  women.  But  it  seems  that  the  experiences  he  had  with  Counts 
Aehrenthal  and  Berchtold,  in  connection  with  the  annexation  of  Bosnia 
and  Herzegovina,  cured  him  of  all  Austrophilism.  For  this  the  man, 
reducing  the  case  to  one  ad  hominem,  cannot  be  blamed.  Yet  that  is  hardly 
an  endorsement  of  state  representation  that  makes  it  possible  to  throw 
whole  nations  into  misery  because  a  single  person  may  have  a  grudge 
against  another.  Isvolski  would  have  served  the  world  better  to  tell 
Counts  Aehrenthal  and  Berchtold  that  he  could  not  bind  his  government 
to  any  such  bargain — such  a  one-sided  one  at  that. 

A   Diplomatic  Jeu  de  Grimace 

On  the  fateful  July  31  two  rather  interesting  things  occurred.  The 
British  government  thought  it  necessary  to  ask  the  French  government 
whether  or  no  it  would  abide,  in  regard  to  the  neutrality  of  Belgium, 
by  the  terms  of  the  treaty  it  had  signed.  A  finer  piece  of  cant  is  hard 
to  discover.  Of  course,  the  French  government  would  respect  the  neu- 
trality of  Belgium !  The  same  inquiry  went  to  Berlin.  But  Sir  Edward 
Goschen  did  not  get  so  ready  an  answer  as  Sir  F.  Bertie  received  from 
Premier  Viviani.     Sir  Edward  presented  the  inquiry  of  his  government 


A  DIPLOMATIC  JBU  DB  GRIMACE  73 

to  Herr  von  Jagow,  the  German  state  secretary  for  foreign  affairs,  and 
received  from  him  the  reply  that  he  could  not  answer  without  consulting 
first  the  emperor  and  the  chancellor.  Those  who  know  what  the  German 
imperial  system  of  government  was  will  concede  that  Jagow  had  no  author- 
ity to  say  either  yes  or  no  under  the  circumstances,  all  the  more  since 
under  the  ministerial  system  of  Germany,  at  that  time,  he  was  but  little 
more  than  vortragender  Rat — reporting  counselor,  a  straw-man  in  other 
words.  Von  Jagow  could  receive  inquiries  and  complaints,  and  could, 
after  bringing  the  matter  to  the  attention  of  Chancellor  von  Bethmann- 
Hollweg,  transmit  a  reply.  More  than  that  he  could  not  do;  such  being 
the  wonderful  aspect  of  Byzantinism  as  practiced  on  the  banks  of  the 
River  Spree. 

Sir  Edward  Goschen  knew  this,  of  course,  and  made  it  his  business 
to  see  the  chancellor  himself.  From  Bethmann-Hollweg  he  received  a 
reply  to  the  effect  that  "Germany,  in  any  event  (before  committing 
herself)  would  want  to  hear  what  the  French  government's  answer  was." 

No  doubt,  that  was  a  foolish  playing  with  words.  But  Bethmann- 
Hollweg  was  really  in  no  position  to  give  a  clearer  reply.  The  German 
general  staff  had  so  long  looked  upon  the  use  of  Belgian  territory  as 
necessary  in  case  of  war  with  France  that  the  chancellor  was  afraid  to  be 
specific.  He  was  sparring  for  time  and  hoping,  meanwhile,  as  he  has 
since  then  admitted,  that  something  would  happen  to  save  him  from  having 
to  deal  with  this  situation.  He  knew  well  enough  that  in  case  of  war  he 
would  be  powerless  to  prevent  the  invasion  of  Belgium.  The  radical  military 
element  would  then  have  its  way,  no  matter  what  objections  he  might 
laise.  A  Bismarck  would  indeed  have  told  Sir  Edward  that  Germany  would 
respect  the  neutrality  of  Belgium.  The  making  of  such  a  promise  might 
not  have  pleased  the  militarists,  but  Bismarck  would  have  realized  that  not 
even  the  worst  of  that  element  would  have  dared  to  remove  him  so  long  as 
the  crisis  was  on.  There  are  some  things  which  even  the  German  emperor 
could  not  afford  to  do,  and  one  of  them  was  a  change  in  chancellors  in 
July  and  August,  1914. 

But  Bethmann-Hollweg  was  not  a  heroic  type  of  man.  In  his 
official  acts  he  was  timid  and  shortsighted,  as  was  to  be  expected  from 
an  individual  of  a  moderately  arriviste  character — from  a  man  who  had 
risen  in  the  government  in  the  police  department,  in  whom  system  and 
orderliness  of  the  extreme  class  had  killed  all  initiative. 

There  was  another  condition  that  beclouded  the  mentality  of  the 
German  government  at  that  moment,  if  the  case  may  be  expressed  in  those 
words.  The  attitude  of  the  French  government  was  such  that  Baron  von 
Schon,  the  German  ambassador  at  Paris,  could  make  but  the  most  pessi- 
mistic reports  to  his  government.     The  result  of  this  was  that  he  was 


74  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

instructed  to  immediately  ascertain  what  the  French  government  intended 
doing.  On  July  31,  as  late  as  7  p.  m.,  the  German  ambassador  served 
notice  upon  the  French  premier,  M.  Viviani,  that  by  1  p.  m.  on  the 
following  day  the  German  government  expected  a  definite  declaration,  on 
the  part  of  France,  what  she  would  do  in  case  war  should  break  out 
between  Germany  and  Russia.  Viviani  did  not  need  the  time  given  him. 
His  mind,  or  that  of  his  government,  had  been  made  up  long  ago.  He  told 
Baron  von  Schon  that  France  would  do  that  which  the  safeguarding  of 
her  interests  prescribed. 

From  that  enigmatic  reply  the  German  government  could  draw  no 
other  conclusion  than  that  France  had  made  up  her  mind  to  go  to  war  on 
the  side  of  Russia.  Indeed,  no  other  course  was  open.  The  Franco- 
Russian  alliance  was  still  in  force,  was,  in  fact,  the  written  treaty  upon 
which  the  Triple  Entente  rested,  and,  according  to  its  terms,  France  would 
have  to  come  to  the  aid  of  her  ally  in  case  of  attack. 

Another  reply  could  have  been  given  by  Viviani  had  he  willed  to 
do  that  in  the  interest  of  peace.  He  could  have  told  Schon  that  France 
v/ould  live  up  to  her  treaty  agreement  in  case  Germany  attacked  Russia, 
but  that  she  was  not  obliged  to  do  that  in  case  Russia  was  the  aggressor. 
That  would  have  been  a  bid  for  peace.  The  reply  Viviani  gave  was 
an  incentive  to  war — a  promotion  of  German  distrust  and  fear,  and 
the  direct  cause  of  her  declaration  of  war  against  Russia  within  a  few 
hours. 

The  piece  of  simulation  which  the  British  and  French  governments 
had  indulged  in  regarding  the  neutrality  guarantees  of  Belgium  stood 
now  unmasked  in  Berlin.  It  was  a  sinister  writing  on  the  wall.  On 
August  1  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  another  occasion  to  discuss  the  neutrality 
of  Belgium  with  Prince  Lichnowski.  It  was  this  conversation  which 
made  the  trustful  German  ambassador  suspicious  for  the  first  time  of  the 
attitude  of  the  British  government.  So  far  he  had  lived  in  his  delusion 
that  war  could  be  localized. 

The  contents  of  the  report  which  Captain  von  Miiller  had  made  had 
caused  Prince  Lichnowski  to  recognize  the  possibility  that  Great  Britain 
might  go  to  war  on  the  side  of  Russia  and  France.  Already  the  man 
was  out  of  his  wits,  though  still  sure  of  his  ground  that  Great  Britain, 
despite  the  frictions  of  years,  would  not  strike  at  a  country  that  had 
been  the  traditional  friend  of  the  British.  He  asked  Grey  whether  Great 
Britain  would  remain  neutral  in  case  Germany  did  not  violate  the  neu- 
trality of  Belgium  and  received  a  reply  from  the  British  secretary  of 
state  for  foreign  affairs  that  was  a  worthy  counterpart  of  the  answer 
the  French  premier,  M.  Viviani,  had  made.  Sir  Edward  Grey  replied 
that  he  could  not  say  whether  or  no  Great  Britain  would  remain  neutral 


A  DIPLOMATIC  JBU  DB  GRIM  ASS B  75 

in  case  of  war  between  Germany,  Russia  and  France,  but  that  the  hands 
of  the  British  government  were  yet  free,  and  that  the  position  which  Great 
Britain  might  take  had  yet  to  he  considered.  PubUc  opinion,  said  Sir 
Eklward,  had  to  be  taken  into  account,  and  public  opinion  in  Great  Britain 
was  very  much  exercised  over  the  possibiUty  of  Belgium's  neutrality  being 
violated.  On  the  other  hand,  Sir  Edward  would  not  promise  neutrality 
on  the  condition  that  Germany  made  the  promise  that  she  would  respect 
the  status  of  Belgium. 

That  again  left  things  in  the  air.  The  reply  which  Grey  gave  Lich- 
nowski  was  virtually  the  same  Baron  von  Schon  had  gotten  from  M. 
Viviani.  The  text  of  the  records  made  of  the  two  meetings  diflfers,  of 
course,  and  in  the  official  white  and  yellow  books  they  seem  very  dis- 
similar. The  fact  is  that  neither  of  them  is  a  stenographic  report,  made 
at  the  time,  but  merely  a  statement  of  a  conversation  as  an  ambassador, 
in  the  one  case,  and  a  foreign  minister,  in  the  other,  remembered  it. 

A  Bull  in  a  Political  China  Shop 

But  so  far  nothing  had  really  happened  in  Germany  that  could  cause 
the  British  and  French  statesmen  to  believe  that  the  men  in  Berlin,  at 
least  Emperor  William,  who  was  still  telegraphing  to  and  pleading  with 
his  fellow-monarchs  and  relatives,  would  not  abstain  from  violating  the 
neutrality  of  Belgium.  At  any  rate  Belgium  had  not  yet  been  invaded,  and 
so  far  the  German  government  had  made  no  demands  upon  the  Belgian 
government.  The  first  of  these  was  made  on  August  2nd  and  was  based 
by  Germany  on  the  report  that  French  troops  were  about  to  enter  upon 
Belgian  territory,  near  Givet  and  Namur,  for  an  attack  upon  Germany. 

The  writer  has  no  means  of  knowing  to  what  extent  this  report  was 
true.  The  French  government  has  steadfastly  denied  that  the  German 
claim  was  founded  on  fact,  and  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  in  the  excite- 
ment of  those  days  the  information  of  the  Germans  may  have  been  unre- 
liable; may,  in  fact,  have  been  the  work  of  some  zealous  agent  who  had 
more  ambition  than  discretion.  Since  I  have  met  many  of  that  ilk  who 
were  so  constituted  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  such  was  the  case.  The 
most  dangerous  human  being  I  know  is  the  government  agent  who  wishes 
to  make  his  mark. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Entente  governments  have  claimed  that  the 
substance  of  the  "strictly  confidential  communication"  which  the  German 
minister  at  Brussels,  von  Below,  transmitted  to  Baron  van  der  Elst, 
Belgian  general  secretary  of  the  exterior,  was  a  mere  pretext  for  the  open- 
ing of  negotiations  by  which  Germany  hoped  to  get  the  consent  of  the 
Belgian  government  for  the  use  of  Belgian  territory  in  the  military 
operations  that  seemed  now  more  inevitable  than  ever. 


76  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

The  facts  of  the  case  support  this  interpretation  strongly,  and  the 
admission  by  Bethmann-Hollweg  that  his  government  had  done  wrong 
seems  to  be  in  itself  enough  to  prove  that  Berlin  was  far  too  eager  to 
make  an  issue  of  what  may  have  been  no  more  than  an  incident  to  the 
mobilization  of  the  French  army.  The  presence  of  large  bodies  of  French 
troops  near  the  Belgian  border  was  in  reality  symptomatic  of  nothing, 
so  far  as  Belgium  was  concerned.  The  troops  might  have  been  intended, 
so  far  as  the  general  aspect  of  things  then  went,  to  protect  French  territory 
in  case  Germany  did  violate  the  neutrality  of  Belgium.  France,  of  course, 
had  ^  right  to  mass  troops  along  the  Belgian  border,  to  take  care  of  an 
eventuality  of  a  critical  character  given  prominence  by  specific  diplo- 
matic conversation.  A  sane  government  in  Berlin  would  have  paid  no 
attention  whatever  to  the  presence  of  French  troops  near  Givet  and  Namur, 
especially  since  troops  held  there  would  not  have  to  be  encountered  along 
the  western  border  of  Alsace-Lorraine. 

Instead  of  taking  that  very  prudent  attitude  the  German  government 
did  exactly  what  it  should  not  have  done.  It  made  the  neutrality  of 
Belgium,  guaranteed  by  Prussia  first  and  later  accepted  as  an  obligation 
by  the  empire,  the  subject  of  debate,  lost  some  time  in  doing  that,  sacri- 
ficed her  military  chances  in  the  south  and  gave  its  enemies  a  very  excellent 
weapon  for  propaganda  warfare.  ,  ■  ',  ^ 

The  German  government  has  made  a  great  deal  of  certain  state 
documents  found  in  the  Belgian  archives  after  the  invasion  of 
Belgium  had  become  a  fact.  Per  se,  these  records  prove  only  that  Great 
Britain  and  France  were  rather  well  informed  of  the  plans  of  the  German 
general  staff  and  government.  They  prove  also  that  Great  Britain  had 
of  a  sudden  taken  an  unusual  amount  of  interest  in  the  status  of  Belgium, 
and  that  in  the  course  of  the  few  years  immediately  preceding  the  war, 
the  British  government  had  come  to  regard  Belgium  as  a  sort  of  naval  and 
military  base  on  the  Continent.  Great  Britain,  if  -we  take  the  conventional 
view  of  things,  could  not  be  prevented  from  doing  that,  nor  was  it  feasible 
to  dissuade  the  French  government  from  similar  activity,  any  more  than 
later  it  was  possible  to  keep  Germany  from  actually  invading  Belgium. 
The  designs  of  our  neighbors  are  something  over  which  we  have  no  con- 
trol so  long  as  no  attempt  is  made  to  carry  them  into  execution. 

The  documents  found  demonstrated  also  that  members  of  the  Belgian 
general  staff  had  been  in  co-operation  with  the  British  and  French  army 
men,  who  had  "organized,"  on  paper,  so  far,  the  military  exigencies  in 
Belgium.  It  can  hardly  be  said  that  on  the  part  of  the  Belgian  government 
this  was  the  strictest  adherence  a  treaty  can  be  given.  A  treaty  not 
observed  in  spirit  is  bound  to  be  ultimately  disregarded  in  text.  This  is 
one  of  the  few  rules  that  have  no  exception.    Even  the  stoutest  admirer  of 


A  BULL  IN  A  POLITICAL  CHINA  SHOP  17 

Belgium  must  concede  that  in  this  respect  the  treaty  in  question  was 
leaky,  and  had  been  made  that  by  the  Belgian  government  itself.  To 
consider  with  two  of  the  signatories  the  eventuality  of  infraction  of  the 
treaty  by  a  third  signatory  may  be  diplomacy,  but  is  not  an  out-and-out 
honest  transaction. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  in  international  relations 
the  ideal  is  not  to  be  obtained  any  more  than  in  the  other  conditions  and 
problems  that  worry  mankind.  From  this  angle  the  Belgian  government 
was  less  culpable.  The  militarists  and  expansionists  of  Germany  had  been 
so  intemperate  in  their  language,  had  given  their  country  so  threatening  an 
aspect  that  the  Belgian  government  might  indeed  cast  about  for  succor 
to  be  summoned  when  the  day  of  trial  came. 

Against  that  stands  what  the  Germans  came  to  identify  as  a  national 
and  military  necessity:  The  invasion  of  Belgium  and  the  use  of  her 
territory  against  the  French  in  case  of  war.  The  number  of  Germans  who 
were  against  the  invasion  of  Belgium  was  rather  small,  and  dwindled  to  zero 
as  with  the  progress  of  the  war  the  Germans  began  to  feel  that  the  cards  had 
been  stacked  against  them.  What  pangs  of  conscience  there  were  felt — if 
war  leaves  room  for  such  a  thing —  were  set  aside  by  the  feeling  that  with 
Germany  attacked  from  every  quarter  any  measure  of  self -protection  was 
allowed.  In  the  course  of  time  this  became  a  recognized  doctrine,  and 
after  that  discussion  of  the  case  was  no  longer  possible.  There  were 
the  incriminating  documents !  How  and  when  they  were  found  was  over- 
looked as  was  the  fact  that  finding  them  was  a  bit  of  belated  luck — nothing 
more.  Had  Berlin  been  in  possession  of  any  evidence,  showing  that  the 
Belgian  government  had  entered  into  military  liaison  with  Great  Britain  and 
France,  that  evidence,  and  not  the  fear  of  French  troops  massing  along 
the  Belgian  border,  would  have  been  made  the  substance  of  representations 
by  the  Germans  in  Brussels  on  August  2.  The  finding  of  the  papers 
was,  therefore,  proof  of  nothing,  so  far  as  the  position  of  the  German 
government  was  concerned. 

The  Government  "Official"  as  Statesman 

Even  if  the  case  had  been  one  of  evidence  and  proof,  as  outlined 
above,  the  German  government  had  as  yet  no  specific  cause  for  complaint, 
at  least  no  very  weighty  one.  It  could,  indeed,  have  called  upon  the  Belgian 
government*  for  an  explanation,  and  it  would  not  have  been  easy  to  give 
a  satisfactory  explanation.  But  invasion  and  war  could  have  beeen  averted, 
so  far  as  Belgium  was  concerned,  by  her  promise  to  adhere  to  the  treaty 
of  1839,  by  which  Holland  acknowledged  Belgium  an  independent  state 
with  "eternal"  neutrality,  and  to  which  Prussia,  France,  Great  Britain, 


78  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Russia  and  Austria-Hungary  became  parties  in  the  quality  of  guarantors. 
The  German  government  failed  to  approach  the  case  from  that  angle 
because  it  had  no  knowledge  of  what  had  been  done  behind  its  own  back 
and  that  of  at  least  one  other  guarantor,  Austria-Hungary.  Instead  it 
made  the  possible  intention  of  the  French  government  the  subject  of 
overtures  calculated  to  get  from  the  Belgian  government  the  consent  for 
the  use  of  Belgian  territory  against  France,  another  guarantor.  The 
government  in  Brussels  could  not  give  such  consent.  That  much  at  least 
was  clear  to  the  men  in  Berlin.  The  best  they  expected  was  a  lenient 
protest  against. the  proposed  invasion  and  the  retirement  of  the  Belgian 
government  to  a  city  further  west,  Antwerp,  for  instance. 

That  such  conduct  would  have  given  the  French  the  right  to  also 
enter  upon  Belgian  territory,  and  that  in  such  an  event  Belgium  would 
have  become  a  theater  of  war  in  a  quarrel  in  which  her  people  were  not 
interested,  was  something  which  Berlin  expected  the  Belgian  government 
to  overlook  in  return  for  payment.  To  say  that  this  ,was  expecting  too 
much  from  a  country  and  people  is  putting  it  mildly.  Bismarck  had 
taken  a  more  sensible  view  of  this  situation,  the  right  view,  in  fact, 
in  1870,  when,  over  the  head  of  the  militarists  of  his  day,  he  announced 
that  the  Treaty  of  1839  was  something  which  Prussia  considered  binding. 

But  Bismarck  was  the  Iron  Chancellor,  while  Bethmann-HoUweg  was 
a  mere  government  official.  Bismarck  was  a  statesman,  Bethmann-HoUweg 
a  politician  and  a  very  poor  one  at  that.  The  former  measured  his  acts 
by  results  they  would  have  twenty  years  hence,  the  latter  lived  mentally 
from  hand  to  mouth,  as  he  had  done  politically. 

The  claim  of  the  German  government  that  the  use  of  Belgian  territory 
was  a  military  necessity  is  hardly  of  sufficient  importance  to  merit  attention. 
It  is  on  a  par  with  the  assertions  of  Emperor  William  that  he  could  not 
stop  his  mobilization.  To  be  sure,  a  mobilization  is  something  that  will, 
for  hours  at  any  rate,  travel  on  its  own  impetus,  but  in  our  days,  with 
telegraphic  and  telephonic  means  of  communication,  even  the  poorest  of 
general  staffs  ought  to  be  able  to  arrest  such  a  preparation  for  war.  The 
plea  that  the  mobilization  program  contained  no  provisions  for  the 
arrest  of  a  mobilization  and  the  diverting  of  troops  to  places  other  than 
selected  in  the  first  place  falls  flat  also.  If  such  provisions  had  not  been 
made  the  great  efficiency  of  the  German  general  staff  was  indeed  a  very 
one-sided  affair,  efficient  only  for  war  and  totally  inefficient  for  peace. 
By  and  large  the  absence  of  so  prudent  a  feature  means  that  in  Berlin, 
and  in  all  other  capitals,  for  that  matter,  they  thought  that  war  there 
must  be  once  the  dogs  had  been  loosed.  After  all,  we  deal  here  with  nothing 
but  lame  excuses  of  a  diplomatic  sort.    The  facts  were  other. 

The  situation  in  Russia,  where  the  czar  made  assurances  of  good  will 


THE  GOVERNMENT  "OFFICIAL"  AS  STATESMAN      79 

that  were  honest  enough,  and  where  Sazonoif,  Grand  Duke  Nicholai 
Nicholaievitch,  General  Soukhomlinoff  and  others  were  speeding  a  general 
mobilization  over  the  head  of  the  sovereign  and  supreme  commander,  and 
the  replies  given  German  ambassadors  by  M.  Viviani  and  Sir  Edward 
Grey,  left  the  German  government  no  alternative  to  preparing  for  war. 
Between  the  Serbs  and  the  Austro-Hungarians  war  was  already  in  prog- 
ress, and  the  German  government,  therefore,  could  not  but  mobilize  as 
rapidly  and  completely  as  possible.  German  troops  were  concentrating 
along  the  German  border,  from  Dutch  Limburg  down  to  Switzerland,  and  on 
August  3  the  French  government  gave  Baron  von  Schon,  the  German 
ambassador,  his  passports. 

The  Great  War  was  on. 

Under  Bismarck  the  Prussian  government  had  managed  to  get  its 
own  troops  into  battle  position  far  south  of  the  point  which  the  general 
staff  of  William  II  considered  the  tactical  and  strategic  center  of  battle 
formation,  if  that  term  may  be  applied  to  what  the  Germans  know  as 
Aufmarsch.  If  that  was  possible  at  a  time  when  Bavaria,  Wuerttemberg 
and  Baden  were  merely  the  allies  of  Bismarck  and  Prussia,  when  they 
were  states  whom  France  expected  to  remain  neutral,  how  much  more 
was  this  possible  with  those  countries  an  integral  part  of  the  empire  and 
with  their  own  military  forces  directly  under  the  control  of  the  German 
general  staff  in  Berlin.  The  argument  made  by  apologists  for  the  German 
imperial  government  that  the  situation  was  different  in  1914  from  what 
it  had  been  in  1870  is  not  very  convincing.  To  be  sure,  the  situation 
was  somewhat  different,  but  it  was  diiferent  only  in  so  far  that  it  was 
more  in  favor  of  the  German  army  and  fortunes  of  war,  as  compared 
with  what  Moltke  and  Bismarck  had  to  cope  with.  The  French  had  since 
1871  greatly  improved  their  defenses  in  situ  adjacent  to  the  border,  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  German  army  had  means  to  reduce  this  disadvan- 
tage correspondingly.  Advantages  were  on  the  side  of  the  Germans  because 
in  1914  their  army  was  being  directed  as  an  unit  which  in  1870  the  Prussian 
Allied  armies  were  not. 

With  such  matters  the  German  general  staff  did  not  concern  itself 
any  too  much.  It  was  out  for  a  quick  victory,  through  Belgium.  The 
fortifications  of  the  French  along  the  Belgian  border  were  not  as  formida- 
ble as  those  west  of  the  Vosges  hills.  There  was  to  be  an  Ueberrumplung — 
defeat  of  the  French  by  crushing  surprise.  Belgium  stood  in  the  way 
of  that,  and  Belgium  had  to  make  way.  Such  was  the  major  and  true 
aspect  of  mentality  in  the  government  circles  in  Berlin  now  that  the  Triple 
Entente  had  decided  to  measure  issues  on  the  field  of  battle  with  the 
Triple  Alliance.  We  must  doubt  that  in  London,  Paris  and  St.  Petersburg 
they  would  have  done  otherwise. 


80  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

On  the  possibility  that  the  Belgian  parliament  would  have  acted  as 
a  check  on  the  Belgian  government  in  case  the  latter  had  shown  partiality 
toward  the  French  and  British  we  need  not  dwell  too  heavily.  Parlia- 
ments the  world  over,  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  included,  have 
had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  the  conditions  that  prevailed  immediately 
anterior  to  the  state  of  war.  In  all  cases  the  executive  branch  of  the 
government  presented  them  with  a  fait  accompli  and  a  demand  for  war 
credits.  The  accomplished  fact  was  either  that  a  state  of  war  existed  or 
that  relations  with  the  foreign  government  were  on  the  breaking  point. 
The  best  which  any  body  of  legislators  has  done  in  such  circumstances 
is  to  applaud  the  men  on  the  ministerial  bench  and  then  vote  money  for 
war  ad  libitum — ad  nauseum.  The  Solons  of  our  day  become  just  plain 
subjects  and  citizens  on  the  day  on  which  the  government,  impelled  by 
necessities  of  its  own  in  which  the  "public  interest"  is  supposed  to  be 
crystalized,  declares  that  a  state  of  war  exists  and  implies  that  this  also 
extends  to  those  legislators  who  might  have  the  temerity  to  examine  into 
the  facts  of  the  case — which  temerity  is  adjudged  to  be  treason  by 
nations  everywhere. 

What  the  German  Government  Overlooked 

The  German  government  would  have  done  its  people  a  great  service 
by  keeping  the  troops  massed  against  the  Belgian  border  on  German 
territory,  aflfording  thereby  the  Belgian  government  the  chance  to  declare 
itself.  In  case  French  military  forces  really  made  use  of  Belgian  terri- 
tory knowledge  of  that  would  have  been  quickly  gained  by  the  German 
government.  The  process  of  obtaining  an  explanation  from  the  Belgian 
government,  as  to  its  intention,  would  have  been  simple  after  that,  so 
simple  in  fact  that  it  would  have  been  automatic.  Against  an  invasion  of 
Belgium  by  the  French  the  Belgium  government  would  have  been  obliged 
to  protest.  Failure  of  that  protest  would  have  left  the  Belgian  govern- 
ment two  courses  open.  One  of  them  would  have  taken  the  form  of  an 
appeal  to  the  signatories  of  the  Treaty  of  1839 ;  the  other  would  have  been 
opposition  to  the  violation  of  her  status  and  territory  by  means  of  arms. 
In  that  case  Belgium  would  have  become  a  co-belligerent  of  Germany,  as 
later  she  became  that  of  France  and  Great  Britain.  The  German  troops 
would  have  rushed  to  her  assistance,  no  doubt,  and  France,  instead  of 
Germany,  would  have  had  to  bear  the  stigma  of  the  "scrap  of  paper." 

But  the  men  in  Berlin  could  not  see  that  far.  An  emperor  who, 
to  himself  at  least,  enjoyed  somewhat  the  blessings  of  omniscience,  was 
too  shortsighted — too  poor  a  statesman  and  diplomatist  to  see  so  simple 
a  case  of  logical  development  of  a  situation.  The  Belgian  government 
had  no  way  out  of  this.    Its  neutrality  remained  either  sacred  to  the  French, 


WHAT  THE  GERMAN  GOVERNMENT  OVERLOOKED     81 

or  a  declaration  of  war  against  France  was,  under  the  circumstances, 
inevitable.  It  was  violated  by  Germany,  and  Belgian  participation  in  the 
Great  War  resulted. 

I  have  used  the  modification  italicized  above  for  a  purpose.  I  say 
under  the  circumstances  because  an  appeal  of  Belgium  to  Great  Britain 
and  Russia  against  the  violation  of  her  neutrality  and  territory  by  France 
would  have  led  to  a  situation  of  the  most  peculiar  type.  Let  us  imagine 
the  Belgian  government  calling  to  its  assistance  Great  Britain  and  Russia 
in  an  effort  to  maintain  her  status  under  the  Treaty  of  1839,  with  France 
as  the  offender,  the  same  France  with  whom  Great  Britain  and  Russia 
were  allied  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  Germany  on  good  behavior. 
What  an  impossible  situation  that  would  have  been!  Imagine  further 
that  this  situation  had  come  into  being  in  the  first  days  of  August,  1914. 
Great  Britain  and  Russia,  according  to  the  asserverations  of  their  states- 
men, would  have  been  obliged  to  also  side  with  Germany  in  its  war  upon 
France. 

It  is  entirely  out  of  the  question  that  this  possibility  had  been  over- 
looked in  London,  St.  Petersburg  and  Paris.  It  is  not  to  be  thought  of 
that  Belgian  neutrality  was  ever  associated  with  so  strange  a  proposition. 
It  was  not  only  to  the  interest  of  the  Triple  Entente  that  Belgium  remain 
neutral  during  at  least  the  initial  stages  of  the  war,  but  such  conduct 
on  her  part  constituted  the  very  principle  of  whatever  measure  the  Triple 
Entente  would  have  to  apply  against  Germany  along  the  latter's  western 
frontier.  If  the  Berlin  government  thought  for  even  a  moment  that  the 
governments  in  London,  St.  Petersburg  and  Paris  had  left  at  all  any 
room  for  such  an  "accident"  then  Germany,  indeed,  had  the  poorest  gov- 
ernment and  foreign  office  a  people  was  ever  cursed  with.  It  was  to  the 
interest,  it  was  a  sine  qua  non,  of  Triple  Entente  diplomacy  and  state- 
craft, that  Belgium,  so  far  as  France  and  Great  Britain  were  concerned, 
and  so  far  as  the  initial  stages  of  the  Great  War  went,  retain  its  neutrality 
untouched — blemished  only  by  what  understanding  there  was  between  the 
Belgian  government  and  Paris  and  London. 

It  is  remarkable,  to  say  the  least,  that  nobody  in  Berlin  ever  gave  voice 
to  this  fact.  But  it  is  not  to  be  assumed  on  that  account  that  nobody  ever 
thought  of  it.  My  opinion  of  German  diplomacy  is  not  very  high,  but 
it  is  hard  to  believe  that  there  were  men  in  the  German  government  who 
would  not  have  smiled,  even  in  those  days  of  stress,  at  the  suggestion 
that  the  Triple  Entente  had  left  room  for  a  contingency  in  which  London 
and  St,  Petersburg  had  to  protest  against  the  violation  of  the  neutrality 
of  Belgium  by  France,  and  then  come  to  the  aid  of  France  against 
Germany  with  large  armies  and  a  blockade,  nevertheless.  A  more  ludi- 
crous situation  could  not  be  thought  of ;  a  greater  predicament  could  not 


82  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

be  pictured  by  the  cleverest  writer  of  farce.  Since  it  cannot  be  assumed, 
within  reason,  that  the  German  government  was  not  fully  aware  of  this, 
we  must  needs  accept,  all  assertions  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  that 
the  violation  of  the  neutrality  of  Belgium  was  a  deliberate  act  on  the  part 
of  the  German  government,  decided  upon  long  beforehand  by  a  general 
staff  that  thought  in  terms  of  maximum  results  in  a  minimum  of  time 
without  thinking  at  all  that  the  neighbor  has  rights  which  should  be  re- 
spected.* 

A  Piece  of  Diplomatic  Hjrpocrisy 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  fact  that  Sir  F.  Bertie,  the  British 
ambassador  at  Paris,  on  July  31  made  a  formal  inquiry  of  the  French 
premier,  M.  Viviani,  whether  or  no  France,  in  case  of  war,  would  respect 
the  neutrality  of  Belgium.  M.  Viviani  is  on  record  as  saying  that  France 
would  respect  that  neutrality,  and  that  France  might  depart  from  that 
policy  only  in  case  another  violated  the  neutrality  of  Belgium  and  made 
this  act  a  factor  of  insecurity  to  the  French  republic.  The  reply  of  M. 
Viviani  was  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  German  government  and  the 
German  ambassador  in  London,  a  procedure  which  in  itself  was  enough 
to  draw  the  attention  of  the  government  in  Berlin  to  the  subject  involved 
and  the  situations  I  have  already  treated. 

The  inquiry  made  of  M.  Viviani  being  entirely  gratuitous,  we  must 
look  upon  it  as  a  piece  of  rank  hypocrisy  by  Sir  Edward  Grey.  British 
diplomacy  has  forced  a  great  deal  down  the  throat  of  a  gullible  world, 
but  it  would  seem  that  the  mentality  of  the  general  public  might  have 
been  respected  enough,  even  in  London,  by  not  expecting  reasonable 
human  beings  to  believe  that  this  detail  of  entente  was  left  to  so  late 


•  It  would  seem  that  here  we  have  something  for  which  those  responsible  for  it  should  be 
placed  on  trial  before  a  tribunal  set  up  by  the  nations  that  remained  neutral  throughout  the 
Great  War.  There  are  enough  such  neutrals  to  make  this  possible,  and  the  small  neutrals  of 
Europe  certainly  have  the  greatest  interest  in  the  case.  The  trial  of  such  persons  would  be 
both  justified  and  prudent,  because  it  would  have  a  salutary  effect  of  a  preventive  character. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  premeditation  of  a  military  undertaking  of  this  sort  has  every 
aspect  of  a  crime,  and  that  it  should  be  reviewed  from  that  angle  and  its  perpetrators  punished. 
The  sooner  general  staff  men  the  world  over  are  made  to  realize  that  they  may  be  held 
responsible,  though  only,  as  is  now  the  case,  when  their  army  has  been  defeated,  compunction 
is  likely  to  visit  them  oftener.  The  same  applies  to  the  civilian  part  of  the  governmental 
personnel  which  gives  its  sanction  to  such  raids  upon  the  small  neighbor. 

The  conduct  of  the  Allied  and  Associated  governments  in  the  matter  of  trying  German 
officers  and  officials  charged  with  "crimes"  committed  at  the  front  has  been  a  series  of  bluffs 
with  a  political  purpose.  So  long  as  the  principle  of  reprisal  is  recognized  by  governments  so 
long  will  it  be  difficult  to  say  what  is  and  what  is  not  a  "crime."  It  is  different  when,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  invasion  of  Belgium,  we  have  a  clear  case  of  criminal  initiative. 

If  in  connection  with  such  a  trial  the  activity  of  the  British  and  French  governments  in 
regrard  to  Belgium  would  be  traced  and  weighed  so  much  the  better,  and  a  great  deal  of  maudlin 
sentiment  might  be  disposed  of  by  looking  over  the  conduct  of  the  Belgian  government,  espe- 
cially from  1911  to  the  outbreak  of  the  War. 

There  is  no  use  doing  any  of  these  things  in  case  they  cannot  be  undertaken  by  a  tribunal 
of  neutrals,  composed  of,  let  us  say,  men  from  Switzerland,  Holland,  Scandinavia  with  the 
exception  of  Denmark,  Spain  and  the  neutrals  in  Latin  America.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
Allied  and  Associated  governments  will  respect  mankind  enough  not  to  expect  it  to  have 
the  least  confidence  in  any  verdict  a  handpicked  entente  tribunal  would  decide  upon. 


A  PIECE  OF  DIPI^OMATIC  HYPOCRISY  83 

an  hour  as  July  31,  1914,  especially  since  the  discovery  of  documents, 
showing  that  there  had  been  contact  between  British,  French  and  Belgian 
authorities  on  what  the  status  of  Belgium  was  to  be  in  case  of  war 
against  Germany.  We  may  be  excused  for  asking  British  diplomacy  and 
historians  not  to  stress  that  point. 

The  fact  is  that  Belgium  had  become  a  vassal  state  of  the  British. 
The  fact  further  is  that  in  Berlin  this  was  known.  True  enough,  the 
German  government  was  still  groping  in  the  dark  in  this  respect,  but 
enough  had  transpired  to  leave  no  doubt  that  Belgium,  in  case  of  a 
world  war,  would  be  an  unsicherer  Kantonist — uncertain  quality.  A  few 
years  before  there  had  been  a  most  violent  campaign  in  the  British  press 
in  regard  to  alleged  Belgian  atrocities  in  the  Congo,  and  for  a  time  it 
seemed  as  if  the  Congo  would  follow  the  Boer  republics.  Of  a  sudden, 
however,  that  campaign  subsided.  The  exposure  by  Sir  Edward  Carson 
of  the  Putomayo  atrocities,  committed  by  Britishers,  had  a  great  deal 
to  do  with  diverting  the  attention  of  the  British  public.  The  British 
and  Belgian  governments  after  that  met  on  a  different  basis,  as  the 
documents  found  by  the  Germans  demonstrate  all  too  well.  France,  too, 
was  a  party  to  the  understanding  that  was  reached,  and  in  the  light  of  this, 
as  already  pointed  out,  the  great  concern  by  Sir  Edward  Grey  for  the 
safety  of  Belgium  was  a  crass  piece  of  sham. 

The  reply  of  M.  Viviani  was  in  absolute  conformity  with  what  had 
been  decided  upon  several  years  before  by  the  two  groups  of  poHticians  in 
Paris  and  London  that  had  managed  to  keep  the  governments  of  France 
and  Great  Britain  in  their  hands  for  the  purpose,  as  was  well  known,  of 
attendmg  to  the  case  of  the  Triple  Alliance  at  a  propitious  moment.  In 
France  the  government  had  been  largely  in  the  hands  of  Clemenceau. 
Briand,  Pichon,  Barthou  and  Viviani  during  that  period.  In  Great  Britain 
the  same  set  of  office  holders  had  not  always  followed  so  very  closely 
and  unswervingly  in  the  track  of  la  revanche,  as  Caillaux  knew  well 
enough,  but  in  the  main  they  had  been  dependable.  When  they  were  not, 
the  men  in  Paris  had  but  to  remind  themselves  of  the  hopeless  naval  con- 
troversy that  was  going  on  between  Great  Britain  and  Germany  to  feel 
that  in  the  end  their  time  and  opportunity  would  come. 

British  interests  demanded  special  scrutiny  of  Russia.  The  defeat 
of  the  Russian  army  by  the  Japanese,  and  the  destruction,  virtually,  of  the 
Russian  war  fleet  by  the  same  people,  eased  that  situation  so  that  later  on 
it  was  possible  to  meet  on  common  ground  in  Persia.  The  rapprochement 
of  Germany  and  Turkey  removed  Constantinople  a  little  more  in  the 
plans  of  Russia's  imperialists,  and  the  annexation  of  Bosnia  and  Herze- 
govina also  pushed  those  plans  farther  away  from  realization.  Bulgaria, 
meanwhile,  was  showing  tellingly  that  she  was  no  longer  minded  to  be 


84  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  child  of  Czar  Alexander  Oswoboditel — a  political  appanage  especially 
of  the  Romanoffs,  and  above  all  only  a  great  war  could  clear  the  socio- 
political atmosphere  of  the  Muscovite  empire  and  retain  in  control  those 
classes  to  which  the  mujik  was  still  little  better  than  a  beast  of  burden. 
So  far  as  Russia  is  concerned  none  of  these  aspirations  were  promoted  by 
the  enterprise  which  was  inaugurated  in  Serbia  and  which  centered  so  much 
about  Belgium.  The  British  and  French  were  rather  more  successful — 
so  far  as  developments  permit  us  to  see  at  present. 

The  period  of  1907-14  was  indeed  the  heyday  of  diplomacy.  The 
isolation  of  Germany  was  completed  by  the  Anglo-Russian  entente.  On 
this  basis  of  power  the  diplomatists  of  the  Triple  Entente  could  proceed 
to  labor  for  the  culmination  of  their  purposes  with  that  degree  of  dignity 
which  everywhere  gave  them  prestige  and  made  their  cause  holy  long 
before  it  had  reached  the  distinction  that  attaches  to  "cause."  Every 
move  of  theirs  was  correct,  because  the  potency  of  the  political  combination 
behind  them  precluded  almost  wholly  the  possibility  of  mistake. 

The  diplomatists  of  Germany  were  not  in  so  comfortable  a  position. 
They  probably  had  on  the  average  as  much  ability  as  their  Triple  Entente 
confreres.  What  they  lacked  was  power  in  reserve.  Nor  was  all  of  the 
strength  behind  them  real.  Austria-Hungary  did  ultimately  far  better 
than  the  greatest  optimists  in  the  Triple  Alliance  hoped  and  Italy  had  long 
ago  passed  into  the  category  of  uncertain  quantities. 

Thus  the  Great  Debacle  came.  It  came  in  a  manner  that  proved  that 
diplomacy  can  be  successful  only  when  there  is  a  superiority  of  power 
behind  it,  and  when  this  superiority  is  actually  admitted  by  those  who 
may  be  the  subjects  of  diplomacy.  British  statesmen  in  the  position  of  the 
Germans  could  not  have  done  any  better.  They  would  have  been  guilty  of 
the  same  "bungling"  had  their  intentions  been  met,  as  were  those  of  the 
Germans,  by  the  superior  power  and  better  strategic  position  of  their 
adversaries.  From  being  isolated,  Great  Britain  became  the  isolator,  and 
it  is  not  exactly  to  her  credit  that  she  did  this  with  a  nation  which  at 
one  time  was  really  her  only  friend  in  Europe.  But  perfidies  of  that  sort 
have  ever  been  a  favorite  means  of  British  statesmanship.  For  eight  years 
Great  Britain  maneuvered  for  position,  and  then  she  struck,  with  Belgium, 
the  poor  little  lamb,  as  a  bait  in  the  trap  set  for  that  most  stupid  of 
animals  of  prey,  militaristic  Germany. 

Sir  Edward  Grey,  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  having  to  ascertain 
from  M.  Viviani  in  the  eleventh  hour  whether  or  no  France  would  respect 
the  neutrality  of  Belgium,  will  go  down  the  corridors  of  time  as  the  man 
greater  than  a  partnership  of  Machiavel  and  Metternich. 


VI 

WHAT  WILL  AMERICA  DO? 

IT  IS  the  practice  of  governments- to  serve  formal  notice  of  neutrality 
when  a  state  of  war  is  on  between  other  nations.  The  United  States 
government  has  done  that  on  the  very  heels  of  each  declaration  of 
war,  issuing  no  less  than  eleven  such  notices  up  to  September  1,  1914. 
The  documents  announced  that  in  the  war  between  the  several  belligerents 
the  United  States  government  would  observe  a  neutral  attitude.  The 
public  was  enjoined  to  conduct  itself  accordingly  and  attention  was  drawn 
to  the  fact  that  on  the  statutes  there  were  laws  that  provided  for  the  punish- 
ment of  those  who  forgot  their  neutrality  far  enough  to  engage  in  acts 
giving  affront  to  a  friendly  power. 

President  Wilson  was  to  realize  very  soon  that  he  would  have  to 
give  these  proclamations  a  personal  touch  if  they  were  to  be  observed  in 
a  proper  manner.  On  August  19th  he  made  an  "appeal"  for  neutrality  by 
the  American  public,  from  which  I  will  quote  here  the  most  essential 
portions : 

"The  effect  of  the  war  upon  the  United  States  will  depend 
upon  what  American  citizens  say  and  do.  Every  man  who  really 
loves  America  will  act  and  speak  in  the  true  spirit  of  neutrality, 
which  is  the  spirit  of  impartiality  and  fairness  and  friendliness  to 
all  concerned.  The  spirit  of  the  nation  in  this  critical  matter  will 
be  determined  largely  by  what  individuals  and  society  and  those 
gathered  in  public  meetings  do  and  say,  upon  what  newspapers 
and  magazines  contain,  upon  what  ministers  utter  in  their  pulpits, 
and  men  proclaim  as  their  opinion  on  the  streets. 

The  people  of  the  United  States  are  drawn  from  many 
nations,  and  chiefly  from  the- nations  now  at  war.  It  is  natural 
and  inevitable  that  there  should  be  the  utmost  variety  of  sym- 
pathy and  desire  among  them  with  regard  to  the  issues  and  cir- 
cumstances of  the  conflict.  Some  will  wish  one  nation,  others 
another,  to  succeed  in  the  momentous  struggle.  It  will  be  easy  to 
excite  passion  and  difficult  to  allay  it.  Those  responsible  for 
exciting  it  will  assume  a  heavy  responsibility,  responsibility  for 
no  less  a  thing  than  that  of  the  people  of  the  United  States,  whose 
love  of  their  country  and  whose  loyalty  to  its  government  should 
unite  them  as  Americans  all,  bound  in  honor  and  affection  to 
think  first  of  her  and  her  interests,  may  be  divided  in  camps  of 

85 


86  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

hostile  opinion,  hot  against  each  other,  involved  in  the  war  itself 
in  impulse  and  opinion  if  not  in  action. 

♦  ♦♦♦*** 

"I  venture,  therefore,  my  fellow  countrymen,  to  speak  a 
solemn  word  of  warning  to  you  against  that  deepest,  most  subtle, 
most  essential  breach  of  neutrality  which  may  spring  out  of 
partisanship,  out  of  passionately  taking  sides.  The  tjnited  States 
must  be  neutral  in  fact  as  well  as  in  name  during  these  days  that 
are  to  try  men's  souls.  We  must  be  impartial  in  thought  as 
well  as  in  action,  must  put  a  curb  upon  our  sentiments  as  well 
as  upon  every  transaction  that  might  be  construed  as  a  preference 
of  one  party  to  the  struggle  before  another." 

Mr.  Wilson  has  been  happier  in  his  selection  of  words  than  he 
was  here,  but  the  important  fact  is  that  his  appeal  made  a  deep  impres- 
sion in  Europe.  Naturally,  Mr.  Wilson  could  not  please  everybody.  In 
Paris  and  London  they  thought  even  then  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
United  States  government  to  take  an  active  interest  in  the  fate  of 
Belgium.  They  thought  this  all  the  more  when  a  little  later  it  became 
loiown  that  President  Wilson  had  not  been  particularly  obliging  to  some 
Belgians  who  called  on  him  for  the  purpose  of  presenting  their  grievance 
against  Germany. 

There  were  many  Germans  and  Austro-Hungarians  who  at  first  paid 
no  particular  attention  to  the  appeal.  To  them  it  seemed  a  matter  of 
course  that  the  United  States  should  stay  out  of  the  war.  The  admoni- 
tion of  George  Washington,  warning  against  entangling  alliances,  was  to 
them  the  genesis  of  the  foreign  relations  of  the  United  States.  Presidents 
Jefferson  and  Monroe,  not  to  mention  virtually  every  other  American 
president,  had  heeded  this  advice  by  the  Father  of  the  Republic;  few, 
in  fact,  could  see  how  the  United  States  could  become  involved  in  the 
war,  except  against  Great  Britain.  The  diplomacy  of  Central  Europe 
had  moved  so  long  in  the  groove  of  "Traditional  Enmity"  that  most  of 
its  managers  could  not  see  far  beyond  this  sorry  limitation.  In  the  case 
of  Germany  the  idea  of  la  revanche  so  tenaciously  held  by  the  French 
was  responsible  for  this  sad  state  of  affairs,  and  in  the  dual  monarchy 
it  was  disdain  for,  and  fear  of,  all  that  was  Russian  that  circumscribed 
vision  and  kept  it  in  narrow  bounds. 

There  were  a  few  farsighted  men  in  Central  Europe  who  did  not  like 
the  aspect  of  things  in  the  United  States,  however.  That  President  Wilson 
had  been  obliged  to  make  an  appeal  for  neutrality,  in  addition  to  his  neu- 
trality proclamations,  had  a  significance  to  these  few.  While  censorship 
prevented  much  of  the  more  uncomplimentary  expressions  by  the  Ameri- 
can press  becoming  known  in  Central  Europe,  it  was  felt,  nevertheless, 
that  the  American  press  and  public  generally  was  not  as  neutral  as  Presi- 


WHAT  WILL  AMERICA  DO?  87 

dent  Wilson  would  have  liked  to  see  them.  If  that  was  not  the  case, 
why  this  appeal  for  neutrality  ? 

The  majority  of  American  newspapers  had  been  frankly  hostile  to 
Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  from  the  very  first.  The  treatment 
given  Belgium  was  largely  responsible  for  this,  as  it  well  could  be. 
Though  the  stupidity  of  the  Berlin  government  was  as  yet  not  understood, 
which,  by  the  way,  might  have  alleviated  matters  somewhat,  the  wanton 
brutality  that  appeared  on  the  face  of  the  event  could  not  but  give  journal- 
ism in  the  United  States  the  direction  it  had  taken.  In  its  conduct  with 
European  nations  the  United  States  had  always  been  most  considerate  and 
obliging;  no  such  incident  had  ever  occurred  within  ken  of  the  average 
American  writer  and  editor,  and  indignation  ran  high,  therefore.  It  must 
have  seemed  to  President  Wilson  that  it  was  going  too  high,  for  otherwise 
there  would  have  been  no  necessity  for  his  appeal.  At  the  same  time 
notice  must  be  taken  of  the  fact  that  the  appeal  for  neutrality  was  to 
some  extent  a  notice  upon  the  several  foreign  and  unassimilated  elements 
in  the  United  States,  who  had  promptly  taken  sides  in  the  great  issue 
and  fought  one  another  with  means  both  fair  and  foul.  The  document 
shows  whom  President  Wilson  had  in  mind  especially — press,  pulpit  and 
public  meetings.  Propaganda  for  both  sides  was  on  and  daily  gaining 
greater  proportions  and  new  forms,  and  the  government  had  to  do  within 
its  powers  what  it  could.  A  little  later  Congress  augmented  these  powers 
by  the  Joint  Resolution  of  March   4,  1915. 

There  was  one  thing  which  diplomatists  of  the  Central  Powers  were 
ever  prone  to  overlook,  as  I  had  ample  opportunity  of  ascertaining.  They 
l\ad  come  to  look  upon  the  United  States  as  a  nation  as  wholly  separatistic 
as  any  state  in  Europe.  The  fact  that  historically,  intellectually  and 
sentimentally  the  majority  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  gravitated 
toward  Great  Britain  far  more  than  toward  Germany  was  only  too  often 
ignored.  At  that  particular  time  the  statesmen  of  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary  were  impelled  to  see  everything  in  the  light  of  war.  Thus  it 
came  that  the  relations  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain 
were  viewed  from  the  angle  of  the  American  Revolution,  the  War  of  1812 
and  Great  Britain's  partiality  for  the  Confederation  in  the  Civil  War. 
Against  these  facts  was  contrasted  the  historically  friendly  attitude  of 
Prussia  and  Germany  generally. 


The  "Orders  In  Council"  Become  Supreme 

Things  were  to  happen  soon  that  opened  the  eyes  of  some  of  these 
optimists.     Governments  at  war  issue,  for  the  benefit  of  neutrals,  lists 


88  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

of  contraband,  and  declare,  if  that  be  within  their  necessity  and  their 
sphere  of  power,  the  establishing  of  blockades.  The  British  government 
was  not  slow  in  doing  this.  The  first  list  of  contraband  issued  is  dated 
August  5,  1914.  The  selection  of  articles  was,  in  the  main,  in  harmony 
with  the  provisions  of  the  Declaration  of  London,  1909,  that  is  to  say, 
as  Absolute  Contraband  were  designated  those  things  which  have  spe- 
cifically a  military  character,  while  under  Conditional  Contraband  were 
listed  materials,  commodities  and  necessities  of  life  which  the  civil  popu- 
lation of  a  belligerent  may  need,  which  are  no  less  needed  by  its  army, 
however. 

For  the  purpose  of  sparing  the  reader  the  trouble  of  looking  up  both 
the  Declaration  of  London,  1909,  and  the  British  Oder  in  Privy  Council 
in  question,  I  will  here  concisely  give  a  list  of  these  articles : 

Absolute  Contraband  were  declared :  arms  of  all  kinds,  ammunition  of 
all  kinds,  explosives  and  projectiles  included;  clothing  and  equipment  of  a 
strictly  military  character;  harness;  saddle,  draft  and  pack  animals  suit- 
able for  use  in  warfare;  camp  equipment  and  its  parts;  armor  plates; 
warships  and  their  parts;  the  means  of  aerial  navigation,  and  machinery 
and  implements  used  in  the  manufacture  of  any  of  the  above  materielle. 

Conditional  Contraband  were  declared :  foodstuffs ;  forage  and  grain 
suitable  for  feeding  animals;  clothing  and  shoes  suitable  for  use  in  war; 
gold  and  silver  in  coin  or  bullion  and  paper  money;  vehicles  of  all  sorts 
available  for  use  in  war,  as  well  as  their  component  parts;  ships  of  all 
kinds  and  floating  docks ;  railroad  material  of  any  sort,  telo-electric  equip- 
ment included ;  fuel  and  lubricants ;  explosives  not  especially  prepared  for 
use  in  war;  barbed  wire  and  nippers  for  cutting  the  same;  horseshoes; 
harness  and  saddlery ;  field  glasses,  chronometers  and  nautical  instruments. 

Little  by  little  this  list  was  extended.  On  September  21  copper,  lead 
and  magnetic  iron  ore,  rubber  and  glycerine  and  hides  were  added,  as  were 
all  iron  ores  in  general  demand.  October  29  the  whole  list  of  Absolute 
Contraband  was  revised  and  extended  so  that  it  included  everything  used 
by  armies  in  modern  times.  The  list  of  Conditional  Contraband  remained 
virtually  what  it  had  been  before. 

These  measures  were  still  within  the  frame  of  the  provisions  of  the 
Declaration  of  London,  1909,  but  a  sweeping  change  was  made  on  the 
same  date  in  what  had  been  the  attitude  in  the  past  of  the  British  govern- 
ment as  a  signatory  of  the  London  Declaration.  By  giving  the  text  of  the 
Order  in  Privy  Council  verbatim  I  can  make  that  clear  enough : 

"1.  During  the  present  hostilities  the  provision  of  the  Con- 
vention known  as  the  Declaration  of  London  shall,  subject  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  lists  of  contraband  and  non-contraband,  and  to 
the  modifications  hereinafter  set  out,  be  adopted  and  put  in  force 


THE  "ORDERS  IN  COUNCIL'^  BECOME  SUPREME       89 

by  His  Majesty's  Government.    The  modifications  are  as  follows : 

"(i)  A  neutral  vessel,  with  papers  indicating  a  neutral  desig- 
nation, which,  notwithstanding  the  destination  shown  on  the  pa- 
pers, proceeds  to  an  enemy  port,  shall  be  liable  to  capture  and 
condemnation  if  she  is  encountered  before  the  end  of  her  next 
voyage. 

"(ii)  The  destination  referred  to  in  Article  33  of  the  said 
Declaration  shall  (in  addition  to  the  presumptions  laid  down  in 
Article  34)  be  presumed  to  exist  if  the  goods  are  consigned  to  or 
for  an  agent  of  the  enemy  state. 

"(iii)  Notwithstanding  the  provision  of  Article  35  of  the 
said  Declaration,  conditional  contraband  shall  be  liable  to  capture 
on  board  a  vessel  bound  for  a  neutral  port  if  the  goods  are  con- 
signed "to  order,"  or  if  the  ship's  papers  do  not  show  who  is  the 
consignee  of  the  goods,  or  if  they  show  a  consignee  of  the  goods 
in  territory  belonging  to  or  occupied  by  the  enemy. 

"(iv)  In  the  cases  covered  by  the  preceding  paragraph  (iii) 
it  shall  lie  upon  the  owners  of  the  goods  to  prove  that  their  des- 
tination was  innocent. 

"2.  Where  it  is  shown  to  the  satisfaction  of  one  of  His 
Majesty's  principal  Secretaries  of  State  that  the  enemy  govern- 
ment is  drawing  supplies  for  its  armed  forces  from  or  through 
a  neutral  country,  he  may  direct  that  in  respect  of  ships  bound  for 
a  port  in  that  country,  Article  35,  of  the  said  Declaration,  shall 
not  apply.  Such  direction  shall  be  notified  in  the  London  "Ga- 
zette" and  shall  operate  until  the  same  is  withdrawn.  So  long  as 
such  direction  is  in  force  a  vessel  which  is  carrying  conditional 
contraband  to  a  port  in  that  country  shall  not  be  immune  from 
capture. 

"3.  The  Order  in  Council  of  the  20th  August,  1914,  direct- 
ing the  adoption  and  enforcement  during  the  present  hostilities 
of  the  Convention  known  as  the  Declaration  of  London,  subject 
to  the  additions  and  modifications  therein  specified,  is  hereby 
repealed. 

"4.  This  Order  may  be  cited  as  "The  Declaration  of  London 
Order  in  Council,  No.  2,  1914." 

Article  35  of  the  Declaration  of  London  is  now  cited  here  to  show 
what  the  modification  was: 

'^Conditional  contraband  is  not  liable  to  capture,  except  when 
found  on  board  a  vessel  bound  for  territory  belonging  to  or 
occupied  by  the  enemy,  or  for  the  armed  forces  of  the  enemy, 
and  when  it  is  not  to  be  discharged  in  an  intervening  port. 

"The  ship's  papers  are  conclusive  proof  as  to  the  voyage 
on  which  the  vessel  is  engaged  and  as  to  the  port  of  discharge  of 
the  goods,  unless  she  is  found  clearly  out  of  the  course  indicated 
by  her  papers,  and  unable  to  give  adequate  reasons  to  justify 
such  deviation." 

Since  it  was  Article  36  of  the  Declaration  which  ultimately  played 


90  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

so  great  a  role  in  the  blockade  measures  of  the  British  government,  I  will 
give  that  also  in  this  place : 

''Notwithstanding  the  provisions  of  Article  35,  conditional 
contraband,  if  shown  to  have  the  destination  referred  to  in  Article 
33,  is  liable  to  capture  in  cases  where  the  enemy  has  no  seaboard." 

Article  33  of  the  Declaration  provides  that  "conditional  contraband 
is  liable  to  capture  if  it  is  shown  to  be  destined  for  the  use  of  the 
armed  forces  or  of  a  government  department  of  the  enemy  State,  unless 
in  this  latter  case  the  circumstances  show  that  the  goods  cannot  in  fact 
be  used  for  the  purposes  of  the  war  in  progress.  This  latter  exception 
does  not  apply  to  a  consignment  coming  under  Article  24  (4),  to  wit: 
"Gold  and  silver  in  coin  or  bullion;  paper  money." 

International  Law  Goes  Into  Discard 

The  principal  difference  between  Absolute  Contraband  and  Condi- 
tional Contraband  as  drawn  by  the  Declaration  of  London,  1909,  is  that 
the  articles  constituting  the  first  are  liable  to  capture  if  it  is  shown  that 
they  are  destined  to  territory  belonging  to  or  occupied  by  the  enemy,  or  the 
armed  forces  of  the  enemy,  and  that  it  is  immaterial  whether  the  carriage 
of  the  goods  is  direct  or  entails  a  transshipment  or  a  subsequent  transport 
by  land,  while  the  items  of  Conditional  Contraband  were  to  be  treated 
as  stated  in  Article  35.  It  is  very  plain,  therefore,  firstly :  That  the  Declara- 
tion of  London,  1909,  did  not  intend  that  the  civil  population  of  a  State 
at  war  should  be  starved,  along  with  the  armed  forces — quite  an  impos- 
sible undertaking,  of  course,  and,  secondly:  That  the  British  government, 
by  its  Order  in  Privy  Council,  of  September  21,  violated  the  said  declara- 
tion by  setting  aside  what  indeed  was  a  provision  hard  to  meet,  Article  35, 
and  substituting  therefor  a  decision  of  its  own,  the  Order  in  Privy  Coun- 
cil in  question,  without  consulting  first  the  other  signatories  of  the  Decla- 
ration of  London.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  the  British  government 
simply  repealed  its  Order  in  Privy  Council,  of  August  20,  which  was 
sweeping  enough,  but  which  still  directed  "the  adoption  and  enforcement 
during  the  present  hostilities  of  the  Convention  known  as  the  Declaration 
of  London."  To  repeal  that  "adoption  and  enforcement  ...  of  the 
Convention  known  as  the  Declaration  of  London"  was  to  say,  in  other 
words,  that  the  Convention  would  not  be  lived  up  to  by  the  British  gov- 
ernment, that  it  was  considered  obsolete  by  Great  Britain,  France  and 
Russia,  who  were  making  common  cause  in  this  as  in  other  respects. 

To  set  aside  in  such  a  manner  a  convention  which  represented  the 
last  word  on  contraband  and  blockade  by  the  powers,  and,  to  some  extent, 
world  public  opinion,  was  an  act  which  the  British  government  and  its 


INTERNATIONAL  LAW  GOES  INTO  DISCARD  91 

allies  must  have  given  considerable  thought.  It  must  be  considered  here 
that  the  Declaration  of  London,  though  made  by  a  conference  that  had 
come  together  at  the  invitation  of  the  British  government,  was  an  agree- 
ment, in  the  nature  of  a  general  treaty,  by  the  following  signatory  powers : 
United  States,  Great  Britain,  France,  Russia,  Germany,  Austria-Hungary, 
Spain,  Holland  and  Japan.  The  Convention  was  never  formally  ratified, 
but  its  authority  was  established  by  a  preliminary  provision  which  stated 
solemnly  that  the  principles  enunciated  were  those  constituting  the  sub- 
stance of  International  Law.  Its  authority,  further,  was  recognized  by 
the  British  government  in  "directing  its  adoption  and  enforcement  during 
the  present  hostilities,"  by  the  French  government  by  stating  that  "the 
declaration  signed  in  London  the  26  February,  1909,  concerning  the  law 
of  naval  warfare,  shall  be  applied  during  the  present  war,"  and  by  the 
Russian  government  by  proclaiming  the  enforcement  by  its  navy  and 
marine  department,  together  with  an  imperial  edict,  "the  rules  on  naval 
warfare  worked  out  by  the  London  Maritime  Conference  of  1908-9" — 
the  Declaration,  in  other  words. 

The  German  government,  on  September  4,  acquainted  the  government 
of  the  United  States,  through  the  American  ambassador  at  Berlin,  that  it 
intended  applying  the  provisions  of  the  Declaration  of  London  provided 
"they  are  not  disregarded  by  other  belligerents,"  and  the  Austro-Hungarian 
government  committed  itself  in  much  the  same  terms.  Though  not  a 
signatory  to  the  Declaration,  the  Ottoman  government  also  declared  its 
readiness  to  be  guided  by  the  agreement,  doing  that  at  a  time  when  the 
British  government  had  already  substituted  for  the  Declaration  of  London, 
1909,  the  thing  labelled  by  it  "The  Declaration  of  London  Order  in  Council, 
No.  2,  1914,"  whatever  the  import  of  this  melee  of  terms  was  to  be. 
Surely,  an  Order  in  Privy  Council  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Declaration 
of  London,  when  the  provisions  of  the  convention  were  being  relegated 
into  the  background  by  three  belligerents,  when  two  other  belligerents  were 
adopting  retaliatory  paper  measures  in  return  for  this,  and  when  three  signa- 
tory neutrals,  not  to  mention  the  rest  of  the  neutral  world  that  was  not  a  sig- 
natory but  an  adherent  for  all  that,  were  not  to  be  heard  from.  In  effect, 
"The  Declaration  of  London  Order  in  Privy  Council,  No.  2,  1914,"  was  an 
abrogation  in  toto  of  International  Law.  It  was  the  application  of  might  in 
the  place  of  what  had  hitherto  been  regarded  right. 

But  this  substituting  of  British  Municipal  Law  for  International  Law 
was  not  entirely  without  warrant,  under  the  circumstances.  There  was 
the  question  of :  When  does  food  become  in  effect  Absolute  Contraband 
instead  of  Conditional  Contraband  ?  Food  was  regarded  Conditional  Con- 
traband by  the  Declaration,  but  there  was  the  insuperable  difficulty — in 
that  light,  at  least,  the  thing  was  viewed — of  telling  what  amount  of  the 


92  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

food  imported  by  a  belligerent  goes  to  the  civil  population  and  what  to 
the  anny.  The  I/)ndon  Convention  did  not  intend  to  starve  the  popula- 
tion of  belligerents;  it  did  intend  to  have  the  scarcity  of  food  become  a 
problem  of  the  military.  The  reduction  by  starvation  of  besieged  garri- 
sons had  long  been  recognized  as  a  legitimate  means  of  warfare,  though 
little  honor  to  the  victor  had  ever  come  of  its  application.  But  to  keep 
the  food  of  a  belligerent  civil  population  from  its  army  is  not  so  easily 
accomplished.  So  long  as  the  civil  population  has  something  to  eat,  so 
long  will  the  army  have  more  than  its  share  of  it.  Such  an  army,  more- 
over, is  entitled  to  at  least  the  food  produced  in  its  own  country,  to  meet 
the  argument  of  the  moralist  d  outrance,  and  Germany,  for  instance,  could 
not  have  been  starved  into  submission,  as  later  she  was,  if  her  army  had 
subsisted  on  the  food  grown  in  the  country  and  the  civil  population  on 
the  import  of  food  which  Great  Britain  and  her  allies  would  have  per- 
mitted. 

When  Diplomacy  Shirks  Problems 

On  that  point  there  can  be  no  difference  of  opinion.  The  point  that 
must  strike  the  observer  as  odd,  to  say  the  least,  is  that  the  participants  of 
the  London  Convention  did  not  see  this  difficulty  in  the  proper  light  or 
deal  with  it  honestly,  and  therefore  failed  to  come  to  an  agreement  on  it. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  did  see  the  point,  what  was  the  use  in  the 
Declaration  of  Articles  33,  34  and  35  ?  Were  they  not  expedients  to  get 
away  from  an  impossible  situation — mere  subterfuges  that  left  things  as 
they  had  been  before?  The  fact  is  that  the  confer enciers  knew  only  too 
well  that  to  put  food  definitely  and  permanently  on  the  list  of  non-contra- 
band would  be  futile,  so  long  as  food  or  the  lack  of  it  is  so  great  a  con- 
sideration in  war — the  very  thing,  in  fact  for  which  most  wars  have  been 
waged.  The  men  who  labored  in  the  conference  knew  well  enough  that 
placing  food  on  the  "free  goods"  list  would  have  been  considered  anarchical 
by  most  of  the  governments  represented.  Great  Britain,  for  one,  would 
have  never  consented  to  this,  neither  would  France  and  Russia.  The  pro- 
gram of  the  delegates  from  the  United  States  was  not  far  from  this  happy 
solution  of  the  problem  of  contraband  and  food. 

Ultimately  the  thing  known  as  "The  Declaration  of  London  Order 
in  Council,  No.  2,  1914,"  was  carried  even  far  enough  to  exclude  not 
only  food  in  any  quantity  from  the  civil  population  of  a  belligerent  govern- 
ment, but  even  the  export  to  neutral  civil  populations  was  limited  far 
below  their  actual  needs,  a  vicious  policy  which  found  in  the  govern- 
ments of  France,  Russia,  Italy  and  the  United  States  a  little  too  much 
support  as  to  permit  the  future  historian  to  say  aught  in  commendation. 


WHEOSF  DIPLOMACY  SHIRKS  PROBLEMS  93 

Naturally,  it  was  not  always  thus.  As  late  as  October  21,  1915,  the 
government  of  the  United  States  transmitted  to  the  British  government 
a  sort  of  general  protest  against  the  violations  of  the  Declaration  of  London. 
That  document  says,  among  other  things : 

**I  believe  it  has  been  conclusively  shown  (in  the  text  of  the 
note)  that  the  methods  sought  to  be  employed  by  Great  Britain 
to  obtain  and  use  evidence  of  enemy  destination  of  cargoes  bound 
for  neutral  ports  and  to  impose,  a  contraband  character  upon  such 
cargoes  are  without  justification;  that  the  blockade,  upon  which 
such  methods  are  partly  founded,  is  ineffective,  illegal  and  inde- 
fensible; that  the  judicial  procedure  offered  as  a  means  of  repara- 
tion for  an  international  injury  is  inherently  defective  for  the 
purpose,  and  that  in  many  cases  jurisdiction  is  asserted  in  violation 
of  the  law  of  nations." 

The  note  goes  on  to  say  that  "the  United  States,  therefore,  cannot 
submit  to  the  curtailment  of  its  neutral  rights  by  these  measures,  which 
are  admittedly  retaliatory,  and  therefore  illegal,  in  conception  and  in  nature, 
and  intended  to  punish  the  enemies  of  Great  Britain  for  alleged  illegalities 
on  their  part.  The  United  States  might  not  be  in  a  position  to  object  to 
them,  "continues  the  document,"  if  its  interests  and  the  interests  of  all 
neutrals  were  unaffected  by  them,  but,  being  affected,  it  cannot  with 
complacence  suffer  further  subordination  of  its  rights  and  interests  to 
the  plea  that  the  exceptional  geographic  position  of  the  enemies  of  Great 
Britain  require  or  justify  oppressive  and  illegal  practices." 

I  beg  to  draw  attention  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Lansing  objects  specifically 
to  practices  which  the  British  government  had  applied  illegally,  by  reason 
of  geographic  disadvantages  of  the  enemy,  against  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary.  He  states  that  he  might  not  be  in  a  "position  to  object  to  them" 
if  the  interests  of  the  United  States  and  all  other  neutrals  were  not  affected 
by  them.  May  I  request  the  reader  to  keep  that  in  mind  particularly, 
since  this  proposition  comes  into  the  foreground  again  and  again? 

The  Position  of  Neutral  Holland 

The  neutral  who  was  to  feel  the  heavy  hand  of  Great  Britain  first 
was  the  Netherlands.  Against  the  Netherlands,  in  fact,  was  primarily 
directed  the  notorious  "The  Declaration  of  London  Order  in  Council, 
No.  2,  1914."  The  territory  of  that  people  is  contiguous  to  Germany,  and 
in  the  past  there  had  been  an  active  exchange  of  commodities  between 
the  two.  The  Dutch  government,  as  a  neutral,  had  no  reason  to  apply 
against  Germany  a  sort  of  retaliatory  export  prohibition,  though  so  far 
as  its  own  needs  went,  it  could,  as  it  did,  limit  the  exportation  of  goods 
to  Germany.    But  a  great  deal  of  food  was  still  bought  in  Holland  by  the 


94  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Germans,  and  that,  of  course,  was  not  a  promotion  of  the  British  blockade, 
which  already  aimed  to  starve  the  civil  populations  of  the  Central  Powers. 
The  Order  in  Privy  Council  referred  to  above  was  to  prevent  that,  though 
the  order  in  itself  was  merely  the  sanction  of  a  sort  of  piracy  that  had 
l)een  going  on  for  weeks  in  the  waters  adjacent  to  the  British  coast.  In 
September  already  British  cruisers  had  brought  up  in  the  Channel  and 
taken  to  the  Downs  ports  a  number  of  Dutch  freight  and  passenger  ships 
whose  masters  had  complied  with  the  Order  in  Privy  Council  of  August  5 — 
with  the  Declaration  of  London,  therefore.  Though  it  was  plainly  a  case 
of  a  neutral  vessel,  from  a  neutral  port  to  a  neutral  port,  with  cargo  for  a 
neutral  consignee,  in  some  instances  the  Dutch  government  itself,  as  in 
that  of  several  copper  shipments,  the  British  government  seized  whatever 
part  of  the  shipment  it  wanted  and  later  bought  it.  The  world  was  as 
yet  not  any  too  familiar  with  the  reign  of  terror  that  was  on  in  the 
North  Sea  and  the  Channel,  and  general  public  opinion  had  to  be  placated 
for  the  time  being.    All  that  was  to  change,  however. 

The  Dutch  government  took  the  seizure  of  its  copper  shipments  much 
to  heart.  It  was  grieved  that  the  British  government  should  have  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  the  metal  would  ultimately  find  its  way  into  Germany. 
The  fact  is  that  the  copper  was  needed  to  supply  the  mobilized  army 
of  Holland  with  ammunition.  Germany's  violation  of  the  neutrality  of 
Belgium  had  left  the  Dutch  people  no  guarantee  that  their  country  might 
not  also  be  invaded  before  the  war  was  very  much  older.  Since  copper 
was  needed  to  put  Holland  in  a  state  of  defense,  and  since  the  United 
States  was  just  then  the  only  country  where  that  metal  could  be  found 
in  large  quantities  in  the  open  market,  Holland  was  obliged  to  take  it 
through  waters  in  the  control  of  the  British  cruisers  and  promptly  lost  it. 
Moreover,  the  danger  of  invasion  of  the  Netherlands  did  not  come  all 
from  the  East.  A  few  days  before  Antwerp  was  taken  by  the  Germans, 
October  9,  and  again  later,  the  governments  in  London,  Paris  and  Petro- 
grad  had  considered  the  advisability  of  forcing  the  Scheldt,  so  that  a  large 
expeditionary  force  might  be  brought  to  the  relief  of  the  Belgian  city 
and  port.  The  Dutch  government  knew  of  this  tentative  project  and 
quickly  moved  its  army,  which  had  been  stationed  for  the  greater  part 
along  the  German  border,  to  the  points  near  the  mouth  of  the  Scheldt.  That 
served  notice  on  the  Entente  that  Holland  meant  to  defend  itself  against 
invasion  no  matter  from  what  quarter  it  might  come.  To  the  Allied  govern- 
ments this  was  not  the  most  pleasing  of  signs  just  then.  In  retaliation  they 
limited  further  the  imports  of  the  Dutch. 

Holland  had  been  perfectly  willing  to  meet  the  wishes  of  Great  Britain, 
even  at  the  risk  of  displeasing  the  Germans  more.  There  was  also  an 
easy  business  way  of  meeting  the  wishes  of  the  British  government  with- 


THE  POSITION  OF  NEUTRAL  HOLLAND  95 

out  offering  official  affront  to  the  government  at  Berlin.  Dutch  exports 
had  so  far  gone  to  Germany  and  Great  Britain  alike,  and  the  government, 
prudently,  had  done  nothing  to  divert  or  direct  this  traffic.  But  it  was 
possible  to  let  the  Dutch  merchants  know  that  it  would  be  best  to  favor 
the  importers  of  Great  Britain,  even  if  prices  were  not  quite  so  good. 
This,  then,  was  done.  For  a  while  the  greater  bulk  of  Dutch  dairy  prod- 
ucts and  the  like  went  to  England. 

All  would  have  been  well  had  it  not  been  that  the  British  government 
put  an  embargo  on  coal  and  left  Dutch  shipping,  the  railroads,  the  factories, 
and  home  consumption  generally,  without  that  fuel.  Coal  had  to  be  gotten 
if  not  every  wheel  in  Holland  was  to  stop  turning,  and  Germany  was 
willing  to  furnish  it,  provided  there  was  an  exchange  in  kind — food. 
Nolens  volens  the  Dutch  government  had  to  enter  into  such  an  arrangement. 

Coal  was  exchanged  for  food  in  precise  quantities  and  the  tyranny 
of  the  high  seas  grew.  In  desperation,  the  Dutch  government  surrendered 
much  of  its  sovereignty  and  gave  its  imports  from  the  West  and  exports 
toward  the  East  into  the  control  of  the  Overseas  Trust — a  corporation 
called  into  being  for  that  purpose  and  standing  under  the  close  supervision 
of  the  British  commerce  agency  at  Rotterdam,  presided  over  by  a  zealous 
convert  to  Britishism,  one  Sir  Francis  Oppenheimer,  son  of  a  Frankfurt 
Jew. 

When  the  copper  shipments  were  held  up,  the  Dutch  government 
placed  itself  in  communication  with  the  United  States  government,  through 
its  minister  at  Washington,  Chevalier  van  Rappart,  and  through  Dr. 
Henry  van  Dyke,  American  minister  at  The  Hague.  The  former  did  not 
accomplish  much,  and  the  latter,  a  most  radical  anti- German,  was  unwilling 
to  do  more  than  was  necessary. 

The  Attitude  of  an  American  Diplomatist 

The  copper  cases  were  the  newspaper  sensation  of  the  day  and  I  had 
a  great  deal  to  do  with  them,  a  circumstances  which  brought  me  in  contact 
with  the  Dutch  government  for  the  first  time.  I  also  ascertained  then 
what  the  views  of  Dr.  van  Dyke  were.  He  was  not  inclined  to  at  all  urge 
the  case  of  the  Dutch.  Quite  frankly  he  expressed  to  me  the  fear  that 
the  copper  might  go  to  Germany,  despite  the  protestations  of  the  Dutch 
government.  I  took  the  liberty  to  disagree  with  the  United  States  minister 
and  tactfully  reminded  him  that  after  all  it  was  not  his  business  to  occupy 
himself  with  the  ultimate  destination  of  the  copper,  so  long  as  the  Dutch 
government  was  willing  to  pledge  itself  that  the  metal  would  not  go  to 
Germany,  which  pledge  the  diplomatist  had  no  reason  to  doubt.  But  evi- 
dently Dr.  van  Dyke  was  not  familiar  with  the   statement  of  another 


96  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Thomas  Jefferson,  who,  on  September  7,  1793, 
instructed  the  United  States  minister  at  London,  Mr.  Pinckney,  to  inform 
the  British  government  that : 

"When  two  nations  go  to  war,  those  who  choose  to  live  in 
peace  retain  their  natural  right  to  pursue  their  agriculture,  manu- 
factures and  ordinary  vocations,  to  carry  the  produce  of  their 
industry  for  exchange  with  all  nations,  belligerent  or  neutral,  as 
usual." 

The  fact  is  that  Dr.  van  Dyke  even  then  had  ceased  to  be  a  neutral 
in  regard  to  Germany,  as  later  he  admitted  in  an  interview  with  a  news- 
paperman. On  his  arrival  in  the  port  of  New  York,  from  his  post  at 
The  Hague,  in  August,  1917,  Dr.  van  Dyke  stated  to  a  reporter  that  he 
was  glad  the  United  States  had  entered  the  European  War  and  put  an 
end  to  its  neutrality.  He  himself  had  never  been  much  of  a  neutral  at 
any  time  since  the  outbreak  of  the  War.  For  a  man  who  had  been  in  the 
diplomatic  service  of  his  country  that  was  not  the  best  sort  of  an  admission 
to  make.  Utterances  of  that  quality  are  likely  to  shake  the  faith  of  foreign 
governments  in  all  United  States  diplomatists. 

What  may  have  been  news  to  a  reporter  of  the  New  York  Times 
was  not  news  to  me  any  more.  I  knew  only  too  well  that  Dr.  van  Dyke, 
as  the  minister  of  a  neutral  government,  favored  the  British  cause  in 
Holland,  as  against  the  cause  of  American  and  Dutch  interests.  He  did 
this  because  he  loathed  the  Germans — for  their  acts  in  Belgium,  he  used  to 
say  to  his  friends  and  social  acquaintances.  The  private  individual  may 
be  permitted  to  do  that;  the  diplomatist,  however,  ought  to  keep  such 
opinions  to  himself.  The  minions  of  Baron  von  Giskra,  Austro- Hungarian 
minister  at  The  Hague,  and  those  of  Herr  von  Miiller,  the  German  min- 
ister, had  no  difficulty  ascertaining  what  Dr.  van  Dyke  said  and  did. 
Their  reports  to  their  respective  governments  could  not  but  increase  the 
suspicion  already  felt  in  Vienna  and  Berlin  that  there  was  something 
not  altogether  in  the  clear  between  Washington  and  London,  an  impres- 
sion then  entirely  due  to  the  discrepancy  between  expectation  and  per- 
formance in  regard  to  the  British  Orders  in  Privy  Council.  Many  of  the 
Dutch  government  officials  of  lesser  importance  were  decidedly  pro-Ger- 
man and  they,  too,  thought  that  Dr.  van  Dyke,  as  diplomatic  representa- 
tive of  a  neutral  power,  was  certainly  too  partial  for  one  of  the  bel- 
ligerents. 

It  was  unfortunate  that  Mr.  Soren  Listoe,  the  United  States  consul- 
general  at  Rotterdam,  also  had  earned  himself  the  reputation  of  being 
ardently  pro- British.  To  what  exent  this  was  based  on  fact  I  am  not 
able  to  say.  At  any  rate  the  Dutch  government  began  to  look  upon 
the  cases  of  Dr.  van  Dyke  and  Mr.  Listoe  as  telling  indications  of  what 


THE  ATTITUDE  OF  AN  AMERICAN  DIPLOMATIST      97 

United  States  neutrality  was.  The  fact  that  the  former  was  of  Dutch 
descent  and  the  latter  a  naturalized  Dane  seemed  to  complicate  matters 
not  a  little.  The  United  States  government  had  in  the  past  often  sent 
men  to  diplomatic  stations  who  were  of  the  same  blood  as  the  people 
with  whom  they  represented  the  government.  That  had  been  done  for  the 
purpose  of  making  understanding  so  much  easier.  In  the  case  of  Dr. 
van  Dyke  and  Holland  that  scheme  had  not  worked,  it  seemed.  Mr. 
Listoe  began  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  man  who  had  no  particular  interests 
in  keeping  relations  between  the  United  States  and  Holland  good. 

For  the  purpose  of  keeping  in  touch  with  the  developments  of  the 
day  I  had  established  good  relations  with  a  high  government  official.  All 
I  will  say  of  his  identity  is  that  he  was  not  Mr.  John  Loudon,  then  the 
minister  of  foreign  aifairs. 

On  the  day  in  question  the  official  was  very  much  under  the  influence 
of  the  dangers  that  were  besetting  Holland.  There  was  some  talk  of 
an  Entente  force  landing:  in  Holland,  at  or  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Scheldt  River,  and  the  German  government  had  again  notified  the  Dutch 
government  that  for  more  coal  from  Germany  more  food  would  have  to 
be  exported.  The  Dutch  were  ready  to  pay  good  money  for  the  coal  of 
the  Germans,  but  gold  was  not  just  then  what  Germany  needed  most, 
although  the  food  shortage  in  the  empire  was  as  yet  but  the  threatening 
aspect  of  the  near  future.  On  the  same  day  had  been  received  from  the 
Dutch  minister  at  Washington,  M.  van  Rappart,  a  communication  placing 
the  status  of  Dutch  shipping  in  no  better  a  light  than  it  had  been  in  the 
past.  There  had  been  some  exchange  of  views  between  the  several  neutral 
chancelleries  of  Europe  as  to  the  feasibility  of  establishing  a  sort  of 
"League  of  Neutrals,"  with  a  view  of  combating  the  highhanded  methods 
of  the  British  blockade.  Chevalier  van  Rappart  had  been  asked  to  sound 
the  Washington  government  as  to  its  own  position.  But  his  reply,  which 
had  come  in  in  the  morning,  had  not  been  encouraging.  The  Dutch  govern- 
ment was  beginning  to  see  how  slim  were  the  chances  of  forming  a  League 
of  Neutrals  under  leadership  of  President  Wilson. 

The  official  was  very  pessimistic.  I  could  not  see  it  just  that  way 
at  the  time,  but  must  say  that  every  one  of  his  predictions  came  true 
shortly  afterward.  He  was  inclined  to  criticize  Mr.  Wilson.  To  that 
I  put  the  question,  what  he  expected  the  United  States  government  to  do  ? 
"There  is  nothing  to  be  done  except  serve  notice  on  the  British  govern- 
ment that  it  must  observe  International  Law,  and,  above  all,  the  Declara- 
tion of  London,"  replied  the  official. 

That  was  well  enough,  but  who  was  to  serve  that  notice?  A  League 
of  Neutrals  might  do  it,  thought  the  minister.  But  no  League  of  Neu- 
trals, more  than  a  name,  was  possible  except  the  United  States  government 


98  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

joined  and  headed  it.  Meanwhile  President  Wilson  and  Secretary  of 
State  Bryan  seemed  to  be  floundering  about  in  a  most  erratic  manner, 
he  thought.  Their  moves  were  uncertain,  and  would  remain  that  so  long 
as  there  was  no  return  on  their  part  to  the  provisions  of  the  Declaration  of 
London — so  long  as  they  permitted  themselves  and  the  world  to  be  run 
by  "Order  in  Privy  Council."  It  seemed  to  him  that  President  Wilson 
was  vacillating  between  duty  and  sentiment. 

When  I  asked  the  official  whether  that  implied  that  Mr.  Wilson  was 
considered  pro-English  rather  than  neutral  I  was  given  the  answer  that 
such,  indeed,  seemed  to  be  the  case.  I  cited  the  neutrality  proclamation 
of  the  president  in  reply,  but  was  answered  with  a  rather  cynical  smile. 
That  had  been  done  before,  said  the  minister.  And  since  the  pronuncia- 
mento  there  had  been  ample  time  to  change  one's  mind.  The  fact  that 
Mr.  Wilson  had  supinely  accepted  the  edicts  of  the  British  government  and 
had  for  them  abandoned  the  Declaration  of  London  spoke  louder  than 
words.  The  convention  in  question  served  no  purpose  if  the  most  powerful 
of  the  neutrals,  party  to  it,  did  not  insist  that  it  be  accepted  by  Great 
Britain  and  her  allies  as  binding  without  modification  of  any  sort.  The 
elimination  of  whole  articles  from  the  agreement,  and  the  impairment 
thereby,  of  virtually  every  other  proviso  in  the  Declaration,  was  some- 
thing which  so  powerful  an  institution  as  the  United  States  government 
would  not  have  permitted  had  it  been  truly  neutral.  In  proof  of  his 
contention  the  official  brought  out  a  textbook  on  International  Law  and 
drew  my  attention  to  a  note  sent  by  Mr.  Thomas  Jefferson  to  the  British 
government  on  September  7,  1793,  at  the  time  of  the  war  between  Great 
Britain  and  France. 

As  is  well  known,  this  was  to  be  the  view,  in  a  general  manner,  of 
the  German  government,  which  as  yet  busied  itself  more  with  retaliatory, 
but  absolutely  futile,  anti-blockade  measures  against  the  Entente  govern- 
ments. 

To  a  very  large  degree  this  opinion  by  at  least  one  prominent 
member  of  the  Dutch  government  was  due  to  the  tactless  conduct  of 
Dr.  van  Dyke.  That  diplomatist  had  the  most  peculiar  manner  of  doing 
things.    I  will  give  here  an  instance  that  is  typical. 

Views  of  an  Irate  Diplomatic  Censor 

Calling  at  the  United  States  legation  about  noon,  on  October  8th,  I 
found  Dr.  van  Dyke  in  a  fine  state  of  agitation.  Mr.  Marshall  Langhorne, 
first  secretary  of  the  post,  a  very  quiet  man  with  a  fine  sense  of  propor- 
tions and  commendable  appreciation  of  his  duties,  had  told  me  that  the 
minister  wanted  to  see  me  on  something  very  important.    When  I  saw  the 


VIEWS  OF  AN  IRATE  DIPLOMATIC  CENSOR  99 

man  pacing  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  fireplace,  like  a  caged  and 
impatient  lion,  I  thought  that  another  calamity  had  fallen  upon  mankind. 

I  took  a  seat  and  waited  until  the  wrath  of  the  diplomatist  should 
have  subsided.  After  a  while  it  did,  and  then  my  attention  was  drawn 
by  the  minister  to  what  seemed  to  be  the  remains  of  burned  papers  in 
the  grate.  This  done  the  diplomatist  handed  me  two  sheets  of  paper 
with  a  remark  to  the  effect  that  their  contents  were  to  be  a  warning 
to  me.  I  read  the  letter  and  notice,  for  such  they  were,  and  then  in- 
formed Dr.  van  Dyke  that  his  cautioning  me  was  superfluous — ^that  I 
had  not  attempted,  nor  would  attempt,  to  be  guilty  of  the  crime  set 
forth  in  the  papers  in  my  hand.  With  that  I  left,  somewhat  put  out 
myself. 

The  smaller  of  the  sheets  of  paper,  a  carbon  copy,  said  or  says: 

"It  must  be  distinctly  understood  that  the  United  States  of 
America,  a  neutral  country,  will  not  allow  its  diplomatic  service  to 
be  utilized  for  the  transmission  of  hostile  communications  or 
war  news.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  give  a  copy  of  the  following 
letter  to  the  press.  I  wish  it  to  be  a  warning  to  all  persons,  of 
whatever  nation,  that  the  United  States  will  resent  and  punish 
every  attempt  to  make  an  improper  use  of  its  diplomatic  service. 

Henry  van  Dyke. 

The  signature  is  in  pencil — bold  and  flourishing. 
The  larger  sheet  of  paper,  also  covered  with  a  carbon  impression, 
contains  this: 

American  Legation, 

The  Hague,  Netherlands, 

Octobeil  8,  1914. 

E.  F.  B.,  Esq.  (original  address  erased  and  initials  surscribed), 
c/o  American  Embassy, 
London. 

Sir: 

Some  one  has  sent  from  Berlin  to  this  legation  in  a  sealed 
envelope,  addressed  to  you  as  above,  a  number  of  printed  docu- 
ments and  letters,  some  of  them  apparently  from  official  German 
sources,  and  all  of  them  evidently  of  a  distinctly  partisan  and 
belligerent  character. 

I  have  opened  the  envelope  because  it  is  contrary  to  the 
announced  rule  of  this  legation  (the  italics  are  mine)  to  forward 
any  sealed  envelopes  except  on  official  business  of  the  United 
States. 

I  have  destroyed  its  contents  because  our  neutral  government 
does  not  intend  its  diplomatic  representatives  to  be  used  as  for- 
warders of  belligerent  propaganda. 


100  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

If  you  have  any  idea  who  the  persons  in  Germany  are  who 
have  attempted  to  make  use  of  this  legation  in  this  improper  way 
you  will  do  well  to  warn  them  not  to  repeat  the  offense.  I 
remain,  sir,  Your  obedient   servant, 

Henry  van  Dyke, 
American  Minister  at  The  Hague. 

For  the  purpose  of  showing  how  Dr.  van  Dyke  viewed  things  I 
must  explain  that  the  offending  reading  matter  had  gotten  into  the 
Berlin-The  Hague  United  States  diplomatic  mail  pouch  with  the  consent 
of  the  United  States  embassy  at  Berlin,  and  that  I  ascertained  that 
neither  the  newspaper  copy  nor  the  printed  matter  was  in  any  way  incen- 
diary. Some  American  newspaper  correspondent  in  Germany  was  bent 
upon  getting  something  past  the  British  censors — that  was  all.  I  may  say 
here  that  American  newspapers  and  news  services  sent  correspondents 
abroad  not  for  the  purpose  of  counting  their  ten  fingers  but  to  get  news  of 
the  Great  War  and  its  associated  aspects. 

That  Dr.  van  Dyke  had  the  right  to  open  sealed  envelopes  from  Berlin 
was  a  little  later  seriously  questioned  by  Mr.  James  W.  Gerard,  the 
United  States  ambassador  at  that  point.  Nor  does  it  appear  that  the 
zealous  minister  at  The  Hague  had  been  appointed  by  Mr.  Bryan  to  be 
censor  of  the  United  States  diplomatic  mail.  If  Dr.  van  Dyke  thought 
that  the  law  had  been  violated  it  was  plainly  his  duty,  as  an  officer  of  the 
government,  to  preserve  the  records  in  the  case,  instead  of  feeding  his 
fireplace  with  them.  Last  but  not  least,  and  that  was  the  part  which 
Dutchmen  find  the  most  delicious,  Dr.  van  Dyke  had  no  authority  to 
threaten  "persons,  of  whatever  nation,"  with  the  resentment  and  punishment 
the  United  States  might  mete  out,  seeing  that  diplomatic  mail  constitutes 
a  privilege  and  not  a  right.  The  "announced  rule  of  this  legation"  was  an 
order  of  the  State  Department  made  much  later. 

The  Censor  Assists  Entente  Diplomacy 

In  itself  the  incident  is  not  important.  I  have  cited  it  here  as  an 
index  to  the  mental  qualities  of  the  United  States  minister  at  The  Hague. 
It  also  leads  up  to  the  question  of  censorship  and  the  absolute  control 
by  the  British  government  of  the  means  of  getting  news  to  the  United 
States.  At  the  time  of  which  I  speak  the  British  censors  held  up  all 
matter  that  did  not  please  and  often  added  and  interpolated,  and  a  few 
months  later  even  the  mails  were  no  longer  secure.  Still  later,  both  cable 
and  mail  were  virtually  closed  to  the  American  newspaper  correspondents 
in  the  Central  States. 

The  censorship  of  the  British  went  into  effect  a  day  or  two  aftei 
war  had  been  declared.     For  a  week  or  so  it  was  still  possible  to  get 


THE  CENSOR  ASSISTS  ENTENTE  DIPLOMACY         101 

"neutral"  newspaper  dispatches  to  the  United  States;  after  that  it  was 
entirely  a  matter  of  hazard,  or  one  of  writing  from  the  British  point 
of  view. 

At  first  British  censorship  was  to  be  a  matter  of  strictly  military 
precaution.  That,  of  course,  could  only  be  applied  to  outgoing  news- 
paper dispatches,  eastward  bound.  Dispatches  intended  for  the  United 
States  may  have  needed  some  scrutiny,  but  with  Great  Britain  in  absolute 
control  of  the  cables  that  was  no  reason  why  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  newspaper  dispatches  should  have  gone  into  the  wastepaper  baskets  of 
the  British  censorship,  next  to  the  French,  the  most  absolute  I  have 
encountered.  The  fact  is  that  the  British  government  suppressed  nearly 
all  news  from  Central  Europe  for  the  purpose  of  influencing  American 
public  opinion. 

It  is  hard,  nowadays,  to  draw  a  distinct  line  of  demarkation  between 
matter  of  military  import  and  matter  that  is  not.  I  have  here  not  the 
space  to  go  into  this  very  interesting  subject,  suffice  the  statement  that 
alniost  anything  can  be  given  the  name  of  military  "information"  if  one 
sets  out  to  do  that.  Political  news,  especially,  is  easily  "military,"  par- 
ticularly when  it  may  be  flavored  with  the  condiments  of  propaganda. 
Perhaps  the  most  noxious  sort  of  newspaper  copy  read  by  the  censor  is 
the  sort  which  is  likely  to  put  the  claims  and  motives  of  his  own  government 
in  a  bad  light. 

'Mr.  Melville  E.  Stone,  general  manager  of  the  Associated  Press  of 
America,  with  which  service  I  was  connected  at  the  time,  was  very  much 
interested  in  the  early  "atrocity"  stories  of  the  War.  These  lurid  tales 
had  it  that  the  most  shocking  crimes  were  being  committed  throughout 
Central  Europe  and  that  Americans,  together  with  English  men  and 
women,  were  being  treated  outrageously.  In  a  few  cases  Americans  had 
been  mistaken  for  Englishmen  and  had  been  arrested.  Appeal  to  the 
American  consulates  had  righted  that.  I  said  as  much  in  my  dispatches, 
but  seemed  unable  to  still  the  demands  of  New  York  for  more  "refugee" 
stories.  Letters  from  the  London  office  of  the  service  complained  of 
the  very  strict  censorship  the  British  had  established,  and  gradually  it 
dawned  upon  me  that  London  had  made  up  its  mind  not  to  permit  copy 
"favorable"  to  Germany  to  reach  the  United  States.  The  word  favorable 
meant  in  this  instance  news  of  a  sort  which  would  not  be  welcome  in 
Great  Britain. 

As  an  example,  I  may  cite  a  long  dispatch  of  mine  which  dealt 
with  the  arrival  in  Holland  of  the  third  American  "refugee"  train.  The 
dispatch  contained  over  two  thousand  words.  It  was  headed  by  a  general 
statement,  then  came  several  short  interviews  with  the  more  prominent 
Americans,  among  them  Henry  George,  Jr.,  and  finally  the  list  of  the 


102  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

"refugees."  The  purpose  of  the  story  was  no  other  than  to  still  the  fears 
of  those  Americans  who  had  relatives  and  friends  travelling  in  Germany 
and  Austria-Hungary.  Inquiry  I  had  made  showed  that  there  were  still 
about  ten  thousand  American  citizens  "summering"  in  Central  Europe. 
To  ease  the  anxiety  of  at  least  that  number  of  American  families  seemed 
very  necessary  to  the  service  and  myself — not  to  the  British  censors. 
The  dispatch  was  suppressed  by  the  British  censors. 

A  good  picture  of  the  censorship  conditions  already  prevailing  will 
be  gained  from  the  following  excerpts  from  the  correspondence  I  had 
with  several  Associated  Press  bureaus: 

Septembers,  1914: 

"From  comparison  of  your  mail  copies  with  your  recent  mes- 
sages it  appears  that  the  censor  has  been  letting  almost  all  of  your 
matter  through.  I  do  not  see  that  statements  from  Germany  which 
mention  the  location  of  French  and  German  troops  can  be  objec- 
tionable, because  they  do  not  give  information  to  the  Germans 
but  just  the  opposite.  R.  M.  Collins." 

Mr.  Collins  was  the  chief  of  the  London  Bureau  of  the  Associated 
Press.  His  reference  to  the  "statements  from  Germany"  was  made  in  reply 
to  a  question  of  mine  concerning  an  order  issued  by  the  British  cen- 
sorship authorities  concerning  military  information.  The  wording  of 
that  order  was  so  ambiguous  that  I  could  not  understand  it  and  asked  Mr. 
Collins  for  advice. 

On  the  16th  of  the  same  month  the  British  had  already  in  force  a 
search  of  the  mails.     From  the  London  office  I  received  the  following: 

"Let  me  remind  you  that  all  mail  matter  which  you  are  for- 
warding to  us  is  now  being  opened  by  the  censor  and  we  have  no 
way  of  knowing  what  he  takes  out. 

"Let  me  also  remind  you  to  preface  every  one  of  Conger's 
dispatches  with  the  word  Conger  and  do  not  preface  a  dispatch 
with  "Berlin,"  which  is  like  waving  a  red  flag  in  the  face  of 
a  bull.  Frederick  Roy  Martin." 

British  censorship  had  progressed  considerably.  The  "mail  copies" 
to  which  Mr.  Collins  referred  and  the  "mail  matter"  mentioned  by  Mr. 
Martin  was  carbon  copies  of  the  cables  I  had  sent.  The  messages  were 
numbered  and  that  number  showed  on  the  carbon  copy,  of  course.  In 
addition  to  the  serial  number  the  messages  also  carried  a  statement  of 
the  number  of  words  filed,  so  that  the  London  office  was  able  to  keep 
tally  on  the  amount  of  copy  suppressed  by  the  British  censors  and  the 
amount  added  for  propaganda  purposes  by  the  same  authorities. 

It  was  the  season  of  the  "atrocity"  yarn.  My  experience  was  that 
such  tales  were  very  much  exaggerated,  to  say  the  least.     But  so  many 


THE  CENSOR  ASSISTS  ENTENTE  DIPLOMACY         103 

of  these  stories  were  making  the  rounds  in  the  press  that  I  deemed  it 
necessary  to  draw  the  attention  of  the  Chief  of  the  News  Department  of 
the  Associated  Press  to  the  case.  A  letter  from  him,  dated  September  19th, 
contains  the  following: 

"As  you  know,  our  Mr.  Roger  Lewis,  John  T.  McCutcheon, 
Irwin  Cobb,  James  O'Donnell  Bennett  and  Harry  Hanson,  all 
well-known  American  newspaper  men,  went  through  behind  the 
German  army  and  were  taken  prisoners  and  sent  to  Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle  under  detention.  The  men  followed  the  army  from  Brussels 
clean  through  on  the  main  line  of  action  through  Belgium.  Every 
one  of  them  has  written  detailed  mail  stories  giving  the  results  of 
their  observations  and  saying  that,  although  they  made  the  most 
careful  investigation,  they  were  unable  to  find  a  single  case  of 
wilful  atrocity  on  the  part  of  the  German  soldiery.  Mind  you, 
these  stories  were  written  by  these  men  after  they  were  out  of  the 
country  and  under  no  duress  in  any  way.  Therefore,  I  think  it 
would  be  wise  not  to  discuss  atrocities,  because  you  cannot  do 
so  from  first-hand  knowledge  but  can  only  give  ex  parte  accounts 
of  such  incidents.     ... 

''The  censorship  in  England  is  very  strict  and  very  severe. 
London  writes  us  that  much  of  your  stuff  is  so  mutilated  by 
the  censors  that  when  it  reaches  them  it  is  not  intelligible. 

Charles  E.  Kloeber." 

Mr.  Kloeber  thought  it  necessary  to  write  me  another  letter  on  the 
same  day: 

"In  view  of  the  fact  that  your  stuff  is  so  censored  by  the 
time  it  reaches  London  and  so  few  of  your  dispatches  seemingly 
are  allowed  to  go  through,  I  suggest  that  you  write  a  connected 
resume  of  the  week's  news  that  you  have  filed,  supplemented  with 
other  matter  that  occurs  to  you,  and  let  us  have  it  by  each  steamer 
that  comes  direct  to  America.  Charles  E.  Klo^bEr." 


Preparing  American  Public  Opinion 

The  following  excerpts  from  a  letter  written  to  me  by  Mr.  Stone 
throws  a  strong  light  on  the  news  situation  and  censorship  of  those  days. 

September  21,  1914. 
"I  enclose  herewith  clippings  from  the  New  York  papers, 
which  you  might  transmit  to  Conger,  so  that  he  can  see  that  both 
by  wireless  and  by  Rotterdam,  as  well  as  via  Copenhagen,  we  have 
been  getting  a  pretty  fair  report.  .  .  .  The  Berlin  report  seems 
to  me  to  be  rather  dry  and,  of  course,  necessarily  meagre.  .  .  . 
Also  you  might  give  us  something  of  the  same  sort  in  Southern 
Holland.  The  people  of  the  United  States  are  almost  weary  of 
the  daily  see-saw  of  the  armies.    They  are  impatient  for  some 


104  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

definite  victory,  which,  of  course,  they  cannot  have  at  the  instant, 
and,  as  a  substitute,  picture  stories  of  a  moderate  sort — not  trivial 
stories — would  be  of  value. 

"Again,  it  would  be  well  to  ask  Conger  if  he  could  confer 
with  the  German  authorities  and  see  if  there  would  be  any  possi- 
bility of  an  Associated  Press  correspondent  or  two  going  with  the 
German  army.  Advise  him  that  the  British  and  French  have 
absolutely  refused  to  allow  any  American  correspondents  with 
their  armies  and  I  should  think,  under  the  circumstances,  the 
Germans  might  be  willing  to  do  it,  and  the  reports  from  these  cor- 
respondents might  come  out  either  by  wireless  or  through  you. 
Of  course,  they  would  have  to  be  handled  carefully  in  order  to 
pass  the  British  censorship,  which  surpasses  anything  I  have  ever 
known  for  stupidity.  MelvilliS  E.  Stone." 

In  explanation  of  Mr.  Stone's  reference  to  a  "fair  report"  I  may  say 
that  the  report  seemed  even  fair  after  the  British  censors  had  suppressed 
virtually  two-thirds  of  all  matter  relayed  by  me  or  written  by  me.  With 
the  wireless  the  British  could  not  interfere,  and  that  helped  greatly  to 
make  the  report  of  the  Associated  Press  as  good  as  it  was. 

On  October  5,  1914,  Mr.  Stone  wrote  me  another  letter  on  this 
subject.     It  said  in  part: 

"The  situation  in  London  is  extraordinary  and  has  been  very 
trying,  but  I  am  glad  to  say  that  I  think  I  see  distinct  marks  of 
improvement.  Melvillk  E.  Stone." 

Meanwhile,  the  London  Bureau  of  the  Associated  Press  was  better 
acquainted  with  the  situation,  as  is  shown  in  a  letter  dated  September  21st: 

"It  is  now  apparent  that  a  very  large  part  of  your  work  is 
going  to  waste,  at  least  so  far  as  the  cable  is  concerned.  For 
example,  your  telegram  No.  134  was  all  killed,  135  was  nearly  all 
killed,  136  all  killed,  138  came  through  in  full,  139  and  140  were 
all  killed,  142,  143,  144,  145  and  146  came  through  in  full,  147, 
148  and  152  were  all  killed.  Frederick  Roy  Martin." 

The  fate  of  dispatches  Nos.  137,  141,  149,  150  and  151  could  not 
be  ascertained,  it  seems,  because  the  censors  in  London  had  also  taken 
the  carbon  copies  of  them  from  the  mail.  The  case  deserves  a  few  words 
of  explanation.  The  dispatches  involved  were  numbered  134  to  152, 
inclusive.  That  meant  19  separate  messages.  Of  this  number  were  passed 
by  the  British  censors,  7;  mutilated,  1;  wholly  suppressed,  11.  The 
British  mail  censors,  however,  had  found  only  5  objectionable,  because 
the  carbon  copies  of  the  other  14  had  been  permitted  to  reach  the  London 
office  of  the  service. 

Mr.  Martin  doubted  that  his  letter  would  reach  me  if  he  did  not 
explain  what  the  numbers  meant.  To  the  typewritten  letter  he  added  as 
postscript  the  following  remark  in  handwriting : 


PREPARING  AMERICAN  PUBLIC  OPINION  105 

"To  mail  censors :  The  figures  in  above  are  not  code  but  num- 
bers of  dispatches.  The  only  object  of  this  letter  is  to  save  the 
Associated  Press  hundreds  of  pounds  now  being  paid  for  cable 
dispatches  that  are  not  delivered." 

This  letter  advised  me  to  reduce  cabling  to  a  minimum  and  make  a 
more  general  use  of  the  mails.  This  I  did,  of  course.  And  after  that 
the  American  public  received  comparatively  little  news  from  Central 
Europe,  since  I  was  then  handling  out  of  The  Hague,  to  which  point  I  had 
transferred  the  bureau,  virtually  every  dispatch  of  the  Associated  Press 
correspondents  in  Central  Europe,  in  addition  to  the  news  matter  I  gathered 
myself.  I  must  state  here  further  that  the  Berlin  dispatches  of  the  Asso- 
ciated Press  were  written  for  the  greater  part  by  two  men  who  were 
distinctly  hostile  to  the  Germans,  a  fact  referred  to  by  Mr.  Stone  in  his 
remark  that  the  BerHn  report  was  "dry." 

The  New  York  office,  however,  anxious  to  present  both  sides,  con- 
tinued to  bombard  me  with  demands  for  copy  by  cable.  Since  I  knew 
that  to  cable  via  London,  as  I  was  obliged  to  do,  since  there  was  no  other 
line  open,  was  futile,  I  wrote  on  October  3rd  the  following  to  the  Chief 
of  the  News  Division: 

"However,  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  carry  on  this  most  un- 
satisfactory sort  of  labor.  Meanwhile,  I  may  not  have  to  tell  you 
that  the  English  censor  is  not  concerned  with  suppressing  military 
news  as  much  as  news  favorable  to  Germany — which,  of  course, 
is  the  same  thing  in  the  end.  I  suspect  strongly  that  some  nine 
interviews  I  secured  from  Americans  returning  from  various  parts 
of  Germany  on  August  19  never  reached  the  London  office  even, 
though  the  term  'mobilization'  was  the  only  military  word  used  in 
them.  At  any  rate,  I  saw  in  one  of  the  American  newspapers  the 
bare  announcement  that  a  special  train  from  Berlin  had  arrived 
in  Rotterdam  with  some  300  refugees  aboard.  After  that  I  feared 
the  worst,  of  course,  and  a  few  days  later  Mr.  Patterson,  of  the 
Chicago  Tribune,  told  me  that  he  had  good  reason  to  believe 
that  the  English  censors  went  as  far  as  to  interpolate  their  own 
views  into  copy." 

The  Case  of  CardinsJ  Mercier 

Before  dismissing  the  subject  of  censorship,  for  the  time  being,  I 
must  give  here  a  copy  of  a  letter  I  addressed  to  Mr.  Martin,  the  assistant 
general  manager  of  the  Associated  Press,  in  connection  with  the  famous 
Cardinal  Mercier  incident.*  My  original  message,  saying  that  Cardinal 
Mercier  was  virtually  a  prisoner  of  the  Germans,  went  through.     Mean- 


•  Cardinal  Mercier  has  since  then  been  quoted  as  saying  that  I   had  "saved  his  life,"  which 
is  not  in  accord  with  the  facts  since  his  life  was  at  no  time  in  jeopardy. 


106  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

while,  British  correspondents  in  The  Hague  and  Rotterdam  had  given 
their  imagination  full  play,  despite  the  fact  that  they  had  no  other  authority 
than  what  I  had,  to  wit :  "De  Tijd,"  a  Dutch  Catholic  newspaper.  Since 
the  stories  then  published  proved  one  of  the  first  great  political  sensations 
of  the  War,  but  were  devoid  of  all  fact,  I  will  here  give  the  letter  in  full. 

"In  view  of  the  fact  that  I  am  leaving  tomorrow  (for  Berlin) 
I  thought  it  best  to  acquaint  you  with  the  steps  I  took  in  the 
Cardinal  Mercier  matter.  I  am  induced  to  do  this,  first,  because 
I  do  not  think  the  incident  closed ;  secondly,  because  I  want  both 
you  and  Mr.  Berry  (my  successor  at  The  Hague)  to  be  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  affair.  With  this  in  view  I  have  asked  Mr. 
Berry  to  read  the  letter  and  then  mail  it  to  you. 

"The  various  exhibits  named  in  the  letter  are  here  enclosed. 

"In  my  telegram  No.  629  (see  date  on  copy)  the  story  was 
first  told  as  it  appeared  in  the  Amsterdam  *Tijd'  of  that  day — 
certain  non-essentials  omitted,  of  course.  On  the  following  day, 
in  telegram  No.  634,  I  added  a  few  other  details,  also  from  the 
*Tijd' — Dutch  papers  generally  having  paid  little  attention  to  the 
*Tijd'  story  of  the  day  before. 

"As  shown  in  Tel.  No.  637,  I  received  the  German  official 
dementi  about  10  a.  m.  on  the  7th,  obtaining  the  same  at  the  The 
Hague  German  legation,  where  I  called  for  the  purpose  of  getting 
some  data  on  the  matter  or  an  explanation.  At  the  legation  the 
story,  as  told,  was  characterized  as  absurd.  I  sent  the  dementi  as 
received  here  direct  from  Brussels. 

"On  the  same  day  I  received  your  cable  No.  1,  and  following 
this  sent  to  Mr.  Conger  Tel.  No.  638.  In  reply  to  the  latter 
I  received  from  Mr.  Conger  Tel.  No.  2,  and  then  sent  Tel.  No.  639. 

"At  5.36  p.  m.  that  day  I  received  your  cable  No.  3.  I 
immediately  called  at  the  German  legation  with  the  request  that 
I  should  be  given  the  papers  necessary  to  enable  me  to  leave  for 
Belgium  that  night,  by  automobile,  if  possible.  I  was  told  that 
this  was  out  of  the  question,  for  the  reason  that  the  legation  did 
not  have  the  authority  to  issue  any  such  papers.  I  made  inquiry  as 
to  what  other  way  was  open,  and  was  told  that  there  was  none. 
The  legation  regretted  very  much  that  nothing  could  be  done  in  the 
matter,  and  I  have  good  reason  to  believe  that  they  really  tried 
very  hard  to  solve  the  problem. 

"T  returned  to  the  hotel  and  wrote  Tel.  No.  641,  which  I 
routed  via  the  Platzkommando  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  acquainting 
you  of  what  I  had  done  by  means  of  Tel.  No.  642,  sending  at  the 
same  time  Tel.  643  to  Conger.  A  little  before  that  I  had  sent  Tel. 
No.  4  a4b  to  the  London  office.  Later  in  the  evening  I  followed 
this  up  with  Tel.  644. 

"At  about  7  p.  m.  on  the  9th  I  was  called  up  by  the  German 
legation.  I  was  told  a  reply  from  General  von  Bissing  had  been 
received  there.  The  message  was  read  to  me  over  the  telephone. 
Tel.  No.  647  was  the  result  of  this.  Later  in  the  evening:  I 
received   from  Mr.  Conger  Tel.   No.   5,  telling  me  that  Mr. 


THE  CASE  OF  CARDINAL  MERCIER  107 

Bouton  had  been  dispatched  to  Belgium.  On  the  following  day  I 
received  from  Mr.  Conger  Tel.  No.  6,  of  which  my  Tel.  No.  652 
is  in  the  main  a  translation. 

"So  far  Cardinal  Mercier  has  not  replied  to  my  telegram." 

The  above  was  written  on  January  11,  1915.  Of  the  several  tele- 
grams mentioned  in  it  only  two  reached  the  London  office  of  the  Associated 
Press.  According  to  the  "Tijd,"  Cardinal  Mercier  was  a  prisoner  and 
had  been  given  very  severe  treatment.  That  story  I  had  forwarded  with 
due  credit.  The  German  official  dementi  denied  almost  in  toto  the  charges 
that  had  been  made  and  which  I  had  repeated  with  mention  of  my 
authority,  the  "Tijd,"  while  the  telegram  from  General  von  Bissing 
reiterated  the  substance  of  the  dementi.  The  fact  of  the  matter  was  that 
Cardinal  Mercier  had  urged  a  part  of  the  Belgian  population  to  resist  the 
Germans  in  every  way  possible.  What  he  probably  meant  is  that  the 
Belgians  were  to  engage  in  passive  resistance.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
the  patriot  the  cardinal  can  hardly  be  blamed  for  that. 

The  truth  is  that  under  the  conditions  prevailing  in  Belgium  his  policy 
was  open  to  criticism.  The  country  had  by  that  time  been  occupied  by 
Germans,  who  were  meeting  the  slightest  outbreak  of  franctireur  activity 
with  all  the  ruthlessness  the  militarist  anywhere  is  capable  of.  The 
Belgian  army  had  been  unable  to  hold  back  the  Germans.  Cardinal  Mer- 
cier was  guilty  of  a  grave  error,  to  say  the  least,  in  calling  upon  his 
hapless  people  to  resist  the  Germans,  since  by  doing  that  he  was  placing  in 
jeopardy  lives  without  affecting  in  any  manner  the  situation  as  it  was. 
Since  the  Germans  did  not  want  to  have  more  trouble  on  their  hands, 
Cardinal  Mercier  was  placed  under  surveillance,  but  not  in  any  manner 
abused  or  mistreated,  as  he  has  since  then  reluctantly  admitted. 

'My  telegrams  would  have  acquainted  the  world  with  the  actual  state 
of  affairs.  But  that  is  exactly  what  the  British  censors  wished  to  pre- 
vent. How  admirably  they  succeeded  is  one  of  the  major  political  facts 
of  the  War.* 


Voice  of  Press  Is  Voice  of  People 

It  is  rather  surprising  that  the  United  States  government  never 
interested  itself  in  the  subject  of  British  censorship.  Now  and  then  the 
State  Department  would  take  in  hand  a  particularly  atrocious  case  in 
which  some  large  firm  had  lost  money  through  interference  with  its  cable- 
grams by  the  British  government.  It  does  not  seem  as  if  anybody  in 
Washington  paid  the  slightest  attention  to  the  one-sidedness  of  the  news 


See  "SocUtS  Anonyme"  in  Appendix. 


108  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

which  resuhed  from  the  suppression  of  nearly  three-quarters  of  the  dis- 
patches written  by  American  correspondents  in  Central  Europe.  Had  it 
not  been  for  the  wireless  of  the  Germans  the  American  public  would  have 
heard  even  less  of  the  "other"  side.  It  heard  almost  next  to  nothing 
as  it  was. 

The  German  censorship  usually  saw  to  it  that  no  really  "disagreeable" 
dispatch  or  mail  story  got  through  without  pruning  by  blue  pencil  and 
scissors.  The  dispatch,  as  it  reached  London,  was  bound  to  appear  to 
the  British  censors  a  rather  partial  account,  and  so  it  went  into  the  limbo. 

To  make  a  long  story  short:  What  appeared  good  to  the  Germans 
seemed  bad  to  the  British.  Between  the  two  the  American  newspaperman 
had  a  hard  time  of  it. 

Since  governments,  statesmen  and  diplomatists  are  rather  fond  of  the 
press  in  times  of  war,  so  long  as  it  is  amenable,  and  since  the  press  has 
only  too  often  demonstrated  that  it  can  make  war  at  will,  it  would  not  be 
so  bad  an  idea  if  this  subject  of  censorship  was  attended  to  a  little  better 
by  parliaments.  Nations,  moreover,  owe  it  to  themselves  to  keep  their 
news  channels  open  and  the  water  in  them  unmuddied. 

It  is  all  very  well  to  be  in  a  forgiving  mood  when  a  war  is  won, 
as  I  have  been  able  to  abserve  in  this  instance  on  the  part  of  the  American 
public.  But  there  is  the  possibility  that  the  martial  adventures  of  the 
future  may  not  always  end  so  advantageously.  The  negligence  displayed 
in  having  the  news  channels  of  the  American  public  wide  open  to  foreign 
interference,  of  a  physical  and  moral  character,  may  cost  dearly  some  other 
time.  If  public  opinion  is  really  and  truly  behind  all  wars,  as  one  must 
doubt,  then  public  opinion,  to  be  intelligent,  must  needs  be  formed  of 
the  balance  struck  between  the  accounts  from  both  sides — ^two  belligerents, 
when  war  is  on.  A  public  opinion  resting  upon  one-sidedness  is  no  public 
opinion  at  all.  It  is  partisanship  of  the  most  noxious  character  because 
the  sentiment  thus  formed  has  not  even  the  advantage  of  being  purely 
selfish — ^the  only  redeeming  quality  that  may  be  associated  with  frenzy 
for  war. 

With  the  phase  of  initiatives  of  the  Great  War  over,  the  acts  of  the 
United  States  depended  entirely  upon  the  American  diplomatist  and  the 
American  press.  The  answer  to  the  question  which  many  Central  Power 
statesmen  were  to  ask  soon:  What  will  America  do?  was  given  by  the 
diplomatists  and  journalists  of  the  United  States.  The  American  public 
may  be  permitted  to  flatter  itself  that  it  decided  the  question  of  war  or 
peace.  Ultimately  it  did  what  Mr.  Wilson,  the  politicians,  diplomatic 
envoys  and  editors  thought  best — mass  psychology  attended  to  that. 

Fully  another  two  years  passed  before  the  answer  was  given.  It 
took  that  long  to  prepare  public  opinion  in  the  United  States  and  find 


VOICE  OE  PRESS  is  voice;  OE  PEIOPLE  i09 

the  auspicious  moment  for  entry  into  the  War.  The  phase  of  expansion 
of  the  Great  Calamity  was  well  over,  and  the  phase  of  attrition  had  set 
in  with  unprecedented  savagery,  when  Mr.  Wilson  finally  found  the  long- 
sought  opportunity  to  associate  himself  with  the  Entente  group  so  that  the 
Central  Powers  could  be  brought  to  their  knees.* 


*  The  following  interesting  dialogue  occurred  between  a  member  of  the  Senate  Committee 
on   Foreign   Affairs   and   President    Wilson: 

Senator  McCumbER:  "Would  our  convictions  of  the  unrighteousness  of  the  German  war 
have  brought  us  into  this  war  if  Germany  had  not  committed  any  acts  against  us  without  this 
League  of  Nations,  as  we  had  no  league  of  nations  at  that  time?" 

President  Wilson:  "I  hope  it  would  eventually.  Senator,  as  things  developed!" 

Senator  McCumber:  "Do  you  think  that  if  Germany  ha!d  committed  no  act  of  war  against 
our  citizens  that  we  would  have  got  into  this  war?" 

President  Wilson:  "I  do  think  so!" 

The  above  is,  of  course,  a  complete  refutation  of  what  has  been  advanced  as  the  cause  of 
war  by  the  administration.  We  deal,  then,  with  a  mere  pretext,  and  not  at  all  with  a  cause. 
In  the  light  of  this  admission  by  the  nation's  Chief  Executive,  we  must  look  for  the  actual 
cause  elsewhere.  Since  it  would  be  unfair  to  assume  that  any  particular  thing  was  the  cause, 
we  must  of  necessity  wait  for  an  explanation.  Just  two  things  stand  out  at  present.  One  of 
them  is  that  even  a  League  of  Nations,  and,  I  presume  membership  therein  for  Germany,  would 
not  have  eventually  kept  the  United  States  out  of  the  war.  The  second  is  that  the  most 
rigorous  regard  for  citizens  of  the  United  States  by  Germany  would  not  have  "kept  us  out 
of  the  War,"  despite  the  promises  made  before  and  during  the  election  of  1916. 

Indeed,  such  a  regard  for  citizens  of  the  United  States  by  the  German  government  would 
have  amounted  to  little  in  the  end.  The  later  notes  diplomatiques  of  the  State  Department  were 
hair-trigger  affairs  of  the  most  dangerous  sort,  especially  the  famous  "Sussex"  note.  That  note 
placed    a    premium  on   trouble. 

Let  us  assume  that  a  ship  with  Americans  aboard  had  been  sunk  by  a  mine!  Let  us 
assume,  further,  that  a  government,  face  to  face  with  defeat,  had  instructed  one  of  its  own 
submarines  to  torpedo  such  a  ship!  Would  the  Department  of  State,  and  the  world,  have 
believed  the  protestations  of  the  German  government  that  it  was  not  one  of  its  submarines  that 
sank  the  vessel — that  it  was  a  floating  mine,  or  that  it  was,  possibly,  the  submarine  torpedo  of  a 
government   acting   as   its   own   agent  provocateur? 

Moreover,  let  us  assume  that  just  about  that  time  one  or  several  German  submarines  would 
not  have  been  heard  from  again,  as  was  often  the  case!  Would  the  German  government  have 
been  able  to  defend  itelf,  since  now  and  then  the  commanders  of  submarines  did  make  mistakes 
or  became  too  zealous  entirely?  Hardly!  The  hair-trigger  situation  created  by  the  notes  of 
the  United  States  government  made  war  with  Germany  inevitable  in  the  end — extended  sub- 
marine warfare  or  no.  To  say  the  very  least,  participation  in  the  Great  War  by  the  United 
States  was  too  inviting,  too  necessary,  too  imperative  to  the  Entente  governments  to  weigh  at 
all  against  the  cutting  pangs  of  conscience  of  a  submarine  commander  forced  to  torpedo  a  vessel 
flying  his  own  flag.  S. 

January  20,    1920. 


VII 

DIPLOMACY  IN  TURKEY 

THE  Ottoman  government  was  the  first  to  join  in  the  European 
War  on  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers.  On  October  30,  1915, 
Belgium,  France,  Great  Britain  and  Russia  severed  relations  yrith 
Turkey,  and,  within  the  next  week,  the  three  last  of  these  Powers  declared 
war  upon  her,  being  joined  by  Serbia  on  December  2nd.  Before  these 
steps  were  taken,  the  diplomatic  representatives  of  the  Entente  group  had 
done  their  best  to  persuade  the  Ottoman  government  to  the  view  that 
the  guarantee  on  the  part  of  the  Entente  group,  for  the  inviolability  of 
Ottoman  territory  for  the  space  of  thirty  years,  would  be  better  than 
risking  another  war. 

There  were  many  men  in  Stamboul  who  agreed  with  this.  Turkey 
had  not  fared  well  in  her  recent  military  enterprises.  She  had  lost  the 
war  against  Italy.  The  Balkan  allies  had  shorn  her  of  almost  the  last 
of  her  provinces  in  the  peninsula,  and  the  revolution  also  had  weakened 
the  empire.  There  was  every  reason  why  the  Ottoman  government  should 
avoid  entering  the  great  struggle  that  was  already  on.  The  War  was 
already  a  fact,  no  longer  an  accommodating  possibility  to  the  diplomatists. 
What  the  constellation  of  Mars  would  be  was  very  plain. 

The  first  successes  of  the  German  army  had  already  been  nullified 
on  the  Marne,  and  the  Austro-Hungarian  forces  were  falling  back  rapidly 
before  the  onslaught  of  the  great  Russian  hosts.  The  Battle  of  the 
Masurian  Lakes  was  indeed  the  only  hopeful  sign  on  the  horizon.  More- 
over, the  British  blockade  had  already  shown  itself  absolute,  and  Great 
Britain  had  not  only  announced,  but  was  already  demonstrating,  that 
she  would  come  to  the  aid  of  the  Entente  with  her  last  man  and  the 
last  "silver"  bullet.  Already  it  was  clear  that  France  would  put  up  a 
most  valiant  defense.  Her  army  was  not  as  decadent  as  speculators  on 
her  birthrate  were  prone  to  believe,  and  Russia  had  done  rather  better 
than  was  expected.  On  the  other  hand,  nearer  home,  the  Rumanians 
were  already  shaky  in  their  alliance  with  Austria-Hungary,  the  Bulgarians 
were  anything  but  committed  to  any  given  line  of  action ;  that  Italy  would 
ultimately  join  the  Triple  Entente  no  sane  statesman  in  Central  Europe 
doubted  any  longer.  Said  Halim  Pasha,  the  Ottoman  grand  vizier,  was 
sure  of  this,  as  he  told  me,  when  the  Italian  government  refused  to  live 

no 


DIPLOMACY  IN  TURKEY  111 

up  to  the  spirit  of  the  Triple  Alliance  treaty  at  the  very  outbreak  of 
the  War. 

To  this  list  of  discouraging  factors  must  be  added  that  the  treasury 
of  the  Ottoman  government  was,  as  ever,  nearly  empty;  that  the  Ottoman 
army  was  poorly  armed  and  managed,  the  defenses  along  the  Darda- 
nelles and  at  the  Bosphorus  in  a  poor  state,  and  the  fleet  entirely  negli- 
gible. Even  the  Osmanli  part  of  the  population  was  not  united,  and  the 
Arabs,  Greeks  and  Armenians  might  strike  for  independence  any  day 
after  the  Ottoman  troops  had  been  called  to  a  front.  To  join  the  Central 
Powers  under  such  handicaps  and  then  risk  being  cut  off  from  them 
by  the  people  in  the  Balkan  and  by  Rumania  was  rather  more  than  even 
an  Enver  Pasha,  Germanophile,  and  a  Talaat  Bey,  a  most  consistent  and 
and  enterprising  Talaatophile  politician,  could  risk.  That  in  the  end  they 
did  run  this  risk  was  due  to  their  fear  that  the  hour  of  the  Osmanli  was 
come,  no  matter  what  agreements  they  might  make  with  the  Entente 
group,  and  that  in  the  possible  victory  of  the  Germans  lay  their  only 
hope. 

Constantinople  has  ever  been  the  "empire."  It  always  was  and  still  is 
the  metropolis  par  excellence.  Of  the  several  states  of  which  it  has  been 
capital  in  its  history  of,  roughly,  2,700  years,  it  was  the  multum  in  parvo. 
It  was  the  glory  and  strength  of  the  Hellenic  colonies  in  Phrygia  Minor,  of 
the  Eastern  Roman  empire,  of  Byzantium  and  of  the  Ottoman  state. 
Founded  in  or  about  660  B.  C.  by  Dorians,  the  city  had  grown  rapidly 
into  prominence.  Her  waterways,  the  Hellespont,  Propontis  and  the 
Ford  of  lo,  and  the  seas  beyond,  the  Pontus  Euxinos  and  the  wide 
Mediterranean,  were  responsible  for  that.  As  the  means  of  navigation  were 
improved,  and  trading  by  water  more  and  more  facilitated,  the  city  on  the 
Golden  Horn  gained  greater  importance.  Soon  she  was  the  mistress  of  a 
great  domain,  and  as  such  she  did  not  often  fall  under  the  influence  of 
such  men  as  Themistocles  and  Alcibiades.  Together  with  Cyzikus,  By- 
zantium refused  to  be  swayed  by  the  quarrels  of  Athens  and  Sparta. 
Having  power  and  interests  of  their  own,  these  two  cities  had  adopted 
policies  of  their  own  and  were  little  inclined  to  listen  to  the  ranting  of 
the  demagogues  in  the  market  places  of  the  capitals  of  Greece  at  home. 

But  Byzantion  was  to  fall  in  the  hands  of  the  Romans.  In  194 
A.  D.  Septimus  Severus  blockaded  and  besieged  the  city,  and  two  years 
later  took  it.  He  went  so  far  as  to  give  the  city  another  name.  But 
Antonia  did  not  stay  long,  nor  did  Roman  rule,  for  that  matter.  Con- 
stantin  made  himself  master  of  the  city  in  324  and  began  to  build  up 
an  empire  in  which  the  Greek  was  once  more  the  chief  political  factor. 

On  May  11th,  330  A.  D.,  Byzantium  became  Nova  Roma,  the  new 
capital  of  Rome,  but  to  the  people  the  city  was  and  remained  Constantinople 


112  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

-city  of  Constantin.  Under  Justinian,  Constantinople  was  at  the  height  of 
her  glory.  The  city  was  immensely  rich  and  had  a  population  of  about 
500,000.  It  was  also  well  fortified.  The  natural  defenses  of  the  site,  water 
at  two-thirds  of  the  precinct,  were  reinforced  by  a  stronger  wall,  and  across 
the  base  of  the  triangle,  on  land,  was  erected  the  strongest  wall  then  known. 
Europe  at  that  time  was  being  overrun  by  several  barbarous  races  whom 
something  or  other  had  dislodged  from  their  homes  in  Asia.  Constantinople 
was  the  only  nut  they  could  not  crack. 

The  Dardanelles  in  Early  Diplomacy 

The  Hellespont — Dardanelles — ^had  meanwhile  been  crossed  and  re- 
crossed  by  many  of  the  famous  armies  of  antiquity.  The  Heptastadion 
Ferry,  as  the  narrows  at  the  base  of  Cape  Nagara  were  styled  then,  oflfered 
the  most  feasible,  if  not  a  very  convenient,  passage  into  Phrygia  Minor, 
Asia  Minor  and  Southwest  Asia  generally.  Among  others  who  passed 
that  way  was  Xerxes.  That  this  robber  baron  of  a  Persian  should  attempt 
to  take  Byzantion  was  natural.  He  failed,  because  a  Spartan,  Pausanias, 
of  evil  reputation  but  considerable  military  ability,  came  to  the  city's 
relief.  For  the  first  time  the  Thracian  Chersonesus  came  to  be  looked  upon 
as  the  backyard,  figuratively,  of  Byzantion,  and  on  almost  the  very  site 
on  which  are  now  located  the  forts  and  redoubts  of  Bulair  a  great  wall 
was  erected,  the  Makron  Teichos.  Perikles  was  the  builder.  Some  fifty 
years  later  Derkyglades  either  added  to  the  strength  of  the  defenses  or 
rebuilt  them. 

The  Heptastadion  Ferry  continued  to  attract  military  adventurers. 
Alexander  passed  over  it,  and  so  did  the  Roman  leaders.  The  Makron 
Teichos  was  hard  to  keep  up,  it  seems,  and,  while  the  city  on  the  Golden 
Horn  was  not  taken  by  every  army  that  passed  by,  she,  nevertheless, 
suffered  great  economic  losses,  and  was  no  longer  what  she  had  been. 
Yet  in  1001  she  was  still  of  enough  importance  to  give  sanction  to  the 
coronation  of  King  Stephen  of  Hungary,  whom  she  sent  a  crown  that 
was  later  made  into  one  with  a  similar  insignia  furnished  by  the  Pope 
of  Rome. 

But  it  seemed  that  the  sun  of  Byzantium  was  setting.  Emperor  Ba- 
silios  succeeded  for  a  while  in  putting  a  stop  to  the  progress  of  the  Seljuks, 
who  were  rapidly  eating  up  the  empire  and  began  to  threaten  its  capital. 
But  he  was  on  the  defensive,  and,  being  that,  he  had  to  do  the  best  he 
could  with  the  Italian  concessionaires  who  had  gradually  infested  his 
domain.  Italian  traders  had  the  peninsula  and  city  of  Gallipoli,  the 
ancient  Thracian  Chersonesus  and  Kalliupolis,  in  their  hands  and  valuable 
concessions  had  been  surrendered  to  the  Genuese  and  Venetians,  including 


THE  DARDANELLES  IN  EARLY  DIPLOMACY  113 

extra-territorial  privileges  or  rights  at  the  very  gates  of  Constantinople, 
at  Pera  and  Galata,  of  which  the  Tower  of  Galata  is  still  the  monument. 
The  Powers  of  Europe  later  made  what  is  known  as  the  capitulations  of 
this  historic  precedent. 

A  period  of  Neo-Idealism  had  meanwhile  seized  hold  of  thought  in 
Europe.  The  Holy  Sepulchre  was  to  be  cleansed  of  the  Saracene,  and 
the  Crusades  were  undertaken  for  that  purpose.  Neo-Idealism  was  as 
unpractical  then  as  it  is  now,  as  the  Children's  Crusade  demonstrates. 

With  the  brief  attack  of  religious  fervor  over,  the  good  knights 
turned  to  pillage  and  conquest  en  route.  Constantinople,  being  unfortunate 
to  lie  in  their  path,  suffered  greatly  from  this.  To  the  Byzantians,  the 
Holy  Places  in  Palestine,  being  so  close  at  hand,  had  little  attraction. 
Familiarity  with  a  thing  has  ever  been  the  best  counsel.  For  holding  a 
reasonable  view  in  this  matter,  and  having  still  in  their  possession  much 
that  could  be  looted,  the  people  of  the  city,  just  then  engaged  in  one  of  the 
many  uprisings  to  which  partisanship  for  Blue  and  Green  led,  were  be- 
sieged, overpowered  in  1203  and  treated  with  a  brutality  that  has  no  rival 
in  history.  For  three  days  the  good  Christian  knights  murdered  and 
pillaged,  raped  and  burned,  and,  when  finally  they  desisted,  it  was  from 
sheer  exhaustion  and  satiety. 

Byzantium  was  never  the  same  after  that.  Michael  Palaeogos  made 
a  desperate  attempt  to  organize  his  state  and  city  for  the  coming  of  the 
Turk,  but  did  not  make  much  headway.  The  Crusaders  had  massacred 
and  pillaged  the  country  side  as  thoroughly  as  they  had  Constantinople. 
What  that  meant  may  be  gathered  by  considering  that  the  population  of 
the  capital  had  been  reduced  to  about  100,000. 

Meanwhile,  the  "400  tents"  of  Osmanli  which  had  been  pitched  on  the 
outskirts  of  Dorylaeum  in  1074  had  grown  into  a  strong  population  by 
reproduction  and  the  assimilation  of  others.  In  1354  the  Turks  crossed 
the  Hellespont  at  the  Heptastadion  Ford,  overran  Thrace,  made  Adrianople 
their  capital,  subjugated  the  people  in  the  Balkans  shortly  afterward,  and, 
in  1411,  cast  their  eyes  upon  Constantinople.  Eleven  years  later  they 
were  able  to  lay  the  city  under  tribute  and  in  1453  they  took  it,  largely 
through  the  assistance  of  military  engineers  and  artillerists  who  were 
good  Christians,  to  wit :  Frenchmen.  Constantin  had  a  force  that  num- 
bered but  7,500.  He  pleaded  for  help  in  vain.  The  succor  that  could 
have  been  brought,  at  least  by  the  Christian  states  along  the  Mediterranean, 
was  not  brought,  because  the  political  situation  in  Europe  did  not  permit 
it  and  the  Byzantians  happened  to  be  the  hete  noire — Huns — of  the  period. 

This  is  the  manner  in  which  the  Turks  got  possession  of  Constanti- 
nople and  her  waterways. 

I  have  not  the  room  here  to  trace  the  further  developments  along  the 


114  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

straits,  with  the  exception  of  stating  that  the  first  of  the  Osmanli  rulers, 
and  their  able  grand  viziers,  set  about  to  fortify  the  entrance  to  the  Dar- 
danelles and  Bosphorus  in  a  maner  which  even  today  must  excite  admira- 
tion. Grand  Vizier  Achmed  Kopriilii  erected  the  castles  at  Kum  Kale  and 
Sid-il-Bahr,  and  armed  them  with  the  best  guns  of  the  times.  Thereafter 
the  Dardanelles  were  closed  to  all  traffic  which  the  government  in  Stamboul 
did  not  favor.  Similar  fortifications  were  laid  out  at  the  entrance  to 
the  Bosphorus,  and  Russia,  into  which  the  republic  of  Nishni-Novgorod 
had  now  grown,  or  degenerated,  as  the  case  may  be,  was  now  further  re- 
moved from  the  substance  of  her  dreams,  the  Zarigrad  on  the  Golden  Horn, 
than  she  had  ever  been  before.  The  fleets  she  had  sent  into  the  Bosphorus 
in  860  and  again  in  1048  had  been  able  to  sail  as  far  as  the  Sea  of  Marmora. 
Attack  from  that  quarter  was  now  out  of  the  question.  Russia  tried  to  get 
to  Constantinople  via  Baltic,  North  Sea,  Channel,  Atlantic,  Mediterranean 
and  Aegean.  Her  fleet  managed  to  get  past  the  Turkish  batteries  at  the 
entrance  to  the  Dardanelles,  in  1770,  but  lacked  enterprise  enough  to 
measure  issues  with  Turkish  batteries  at  Tchanak  Kale  and  Kilid-il-Bahr. 
At  the  headland  of  Kefes  Burnu  it  came  to  and  put  about. 

A  British  fleet,  under  Admiral  Duckworth,  was  more  successful  in 
1807.  It  reached  Constantinople,  but  the  peace  treaty  made  two  years 
later  recognized  the  Dardanelles,  Sea  of  Marmora  and  Bosphorus  as  Otto- 
man territorial  waters.  Such  being  the  case  no  foreign  warcraft  could 
hereafter  enter  the  straits  without  the  permission  of  the  Turkish  govern- 
ment, which  permission,  by  the  way,  depended  again  upon  several  of 
the  other  signatory  Powers.  For  warships,  then,  the  Dardanelles  and 
Bosphorus  were  closed.  For  merchant  vessels,  of  any  registry,  they  re- 
mained open  so  long  as  the  Turkish  government  had  no  valid  reason  to 
close  them,  which  reason  again  was  subject  to  what  the  Concert  of  Europe 
might  have  to  say.  This  status  of  the  case  was  created  and  ratified,  and 
in  some  instances  modified,  by  the  Hunkiar  Iskelessi  Treaty  of  1833,  made 
between  Russia  and  Turkey;  the  Dardanelles  Treaty  of  1841,  the  Paris 
Dardanelles  Convention  of  1856,  the  London  Protocol  of  1871  and  the 
Berlin  Convention  of  1878.  It  was  modified  in  1853,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Crimean  War,  when  French  and  British  warcraft,  as  allies  of  the 
Turks  against  Russia,  appeared  before  Constantinople,  and  in  1878  when 
several  British  ships  arrived  off  the  city  for  the  purpose  of  defending  it, 
if  need  be,  against  the  Russians.  During  the  late  Balkan  War  the  Ottoman 
government  was  persuaded  to  permit  each  of  the  Great  Powers  to  station 
in  the  Golden  Horn  a  small  cruiser,  knewn  as  stationaire,  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  Europeans  in  the  city.  That  privilege  was  still  given  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  European  War,  nor  was  it  specifically  recalled  when 
the  Ottoman  government  abolished  the  capitulations — concessions  of  an 


THE  DARDANELLES  IN  EARLY  DIPLOMACY         115 

extra-territorial  character  given  governments  for  the  protection  of  the 
interests  of  their  nationals,  as  the  claims  read. 

As  pointed  out,  the  Byzantian  government  had  seen  fit,  for  very  good 
reasons,  to  grant  the  Italians  similar  concessions  centuries  before.  It  did 
that  when  it  was  moving  along  swiftly  on  its  downward  curve.  The 
case  of  the  Turk  was  the  same.  So  long  as  the  sultans  were  strong, 
largely  because  they  had  good  premiers  and  ministers,  so  long  were  the 
haughty  diplomatic  envoys  of  the  European  powers  obliged  to  appear 
before  the  several  Osmanli  Majesties  in  cages.  When  the  Turk  was  no 
longer  strong  and  able  the  process  was  reversed.  Such  is  the  course  of 
human  events. 

Entente  Diplomacy  When  Handicapped 

On  August  9,  1914,  a  few  days  after  the  outbreak  of  the  War,  the 
German  dreadnaught  cruiser  "Goeben'*  and  the  light  cruiser  "Breslau" 
sought  refuge  in  the  Dardanelles  from  their  British  and  French  pursuers 
in  the  Mediterranean.  For  two  days  the  Ottoman  government  did  not 
know  what  to  do.  To  give  asylum  to  the  two  warships,  for  longer  than  the 
time  permitted  by  international  practice,  was  dangerous.  The  diplomatists 
of  the  Triple  Entente  would  call,  as  they  did,  at  the  Bab-i-Ali,  Sublime 
Porte,  and  demand  an  explanation.  Grand  Vizier  Said  Halim  Pasha, 
Enver  Pasha,  the  minister  of  war,  and  Talaat  Bey,  minister  of  the  interior 
and  general  factotum  of  the  Ottoman  government,  found  themselves  in 
sore  predicament.  It  would  not  do  to  offend  the  governments  in  London, 
Petrograd  and  Paris.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Berlin  government  could 
not  be  affronted. 

For  a  day  the  problem  remained  unsolved,  and  then  a  solution  was 
found  by  the  several  heads  that  were  stuck  together,  to  wit :  The  Otto- 
man ministers  already  named,  Baron  von  Wangenheim,  the  German  am- 
bassador to  the  Sublime  Porte,  and  the  men  in  Berlin.  The  solution 
was  that  the  "Goeben"  and  "Breslau"  should  be  bought  by  the  Ottoman 
government.  They  were  bought  over  the  protest  of  the  British,  French 
and  Russian  ambassadors  and  governments.  The  prompt  conversion  of 
the  ships  into  "Sultan  Jawus  Selim,^'  for  the  "Goeben,"  and  "Midillih," 
for  the  "Breslau,"  did  not  appease  the  anger  of  London,  Paris  and 
Petrograd. 

But  the  Ottoman  government  had  an  argument  of  its  own.  The 
United  States  government  had  in  the  preceding  month  transferred  by 
an  act  of  Congress,  dated  July  8th,  and  for  a  consideration  of  $12,535,- 
276  and  98  cents,  a  regular  bargain  figure,  to  one  Fred  J.  Gauntlett,  the 
United  States  battleships  "Idaho"  and  "Mississippi."    The  understanding 


116  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

was,  though  Mr.  Wilson  could  not  himself  appear  in  the  transaction  as  the 
seller,  to  transfer  these  ships  to  the  Greek  government,  as  was  done. 

The  two  battleships  were  of  a  rather  obsolete  type  and  fitted  no 
longer  into  the  tactical  scheme  of  the  United  States  navy  department. 
But  they  were  superior  to  anything  the  Greeks  had,  and  the  Turks  also 
had  in  their  ramshackle  navy  nothing  that  came  at  all  close  in  efficiency 
to  the  two  craft.  The  Ottoman  government  objected  to  the  sale,  and  the 
American  ambassador  at  Constantinople,  Mr.  Henry  Morgenthau,  Sr.,  also 
did  not  view  the  transfer  of  the  warships  with  favor.  It  was  generally 
known  that  the  Greek  government  bought  the  ships  to  attend  at  some  day 
not  far  oflf,  under  the  aegis  of  another  Balkan  League,  to  the  case  of 
the  Turks  for  good.  Graecia  irredenta  was  to  be  redeemed.  As  yet  the 
Turks  held  several  of  the  Greek  islands  in  the  Aegean,  and  Athens  made 
claims  to  certain  parts  along  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  notably  the  district 
and  city  of  Smyrna  and  the  Cilician  Plain,  with  the  towns  of  Mersina 
and  Tarsus. 

Graecia  irredenta,  so  hoped  the  diplomatists  of  the  Balkans,  was  to 
be  redeemed  together  with  Bulgaria  irredenta  in  Thrace.  The  Nationalist 
Party  of  Bulgaria,  headed  by  M.  I.  M.  Guechoflf,  one  of  the  Bulgarian 
premiers  during  the  late  Balkan  War,  was  determined  to  make  good  the 
defeat  suffered  at  the  peace  conference  in  Bucharest,  1913,  which  fastened 
upon  a  people  as  noxious  a  treaty  as  was  ever  signed.  To  make  good  that 
defeat  was  possible,  however,  only  at  the  expense  of  the  Turks.  The 
Serbs  stood  in  too  high  an  esteem,  if  we  may  call  it  that,  with  the  Russian 
government,  which  just  then  was  Sazonoff  from  cellar  to  attic,  to  figure 
in  the  revanche  scheme  of  the  Bulgarian  Nationalist  Party.  With  the 
Turk  it  was  diflPerent,  of  course.  He  had  few  friends  just  then,  as  the 
London  and  Bucharest  conferences  had  demonstrated,  and  Russia  had 
not  changed  her  plans — was  still  dreaming  the  dream  of  seeing  the  Ro- 
manoffs, in  temporal  and  spiritual  sublimeness,  enthroned  in  the  Zarigrad 
— the  emperor  city — on  the  Golden  Horn.  How  eternally  great  a  man 
Sazonoff  would  have  been  in  that  case ! 

The  Neo-Idealists  of  reactionary  Russia  looked  upon  the  substitution 
of  the  Greek  Cross  for  the  Crescent  on  Hagia  Sophia  mosque  as  a  god- 
sent  duty.  Practical  men  of  the  Sazonoff  type  had  plans  of  their  own — 
Russia's  hegemony  of  the  world  south  of  the  borders  of  the  Russian 
empire.  Control  of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Suez  Canal  was  to  follow 
and  after  that  it  was  to  be  seen  whether  or  no  Great  Britain  could  keep 
her  empire  in  India  with  the  route  about  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  the 
only  one  open  for  her  mighty  armada.  Sazonoff  and  his  ilk  were  indeed 
playing  the  lute  of  the  Triple  Entente  in  the  Concert  of  Europe,  but 
they  had  not  forgotten  that  the  unbelievable,  an  alliance  between  demo- 


ENTENTE  DIPLOMACY  WHEN  HANDICAPPED        117 

cratic  France  and  autocratic  Russia,  had  been  brought  about  because  of 
the  antipathy  of  the  Russian  bear  for  the  British  lion. 

M.  Guechoff — I  may  say  en  passant  that  I  know  him  very  well — knew 
all  that  and  more.  He  was,  in  addition,  a  Russophile  by  conviction — one 
of  those  quietly  intense  natures  in  whom  gratitude  and  resentment  are 
lasting  sensations.  He  believed  implicitly  in  the  cause  of  the  Slav,  and 
the  noble  equestrian  statue  of  Czar  Alexander  Oswohoditel,  monumented 
almost  before  his  house  in  Sofia,  was  to  him  rather  more  than  to  the  men 
in  the  Sofia  foreign  office  at  that  time.  Alexander  II,  Czar  Liberator, 
had  shaken  the  Turk  off  the  Bulgars.  M.  Guechoff  cherished  the  hope 
that  he  would  be  able  to  drive  the  Turk  out  of  Thrace.  What  he  would 
do  with  Constantinople,  Zarigrad,  was  not  so  clear  to  him.  But  time 
brings  counsel. 

A  Balkan  "Problem"  in  the  Making 

There  was  no  entente  yet  between  Greek  and  Bulgar,  so  far  as  I  know, 
though  a  lame  sort  of  alliance  between  Greece  and  Serbia  a  la  Italia. 
But  the  fact  is  that  the  leaders  of  certain  elements  in  Bulgaria  and  Greece 
had  decided  upon  the  matter.  I  discussed  the  question  with  several  of  them, 
and  found  that  the  more  conservative  and  far-sighted  thought  that  while 
Greece  was  to  have  again  control  of  all  the  Greek  islands  in  the  Aegean, 
and  the  districts  in  Asia  Minor  I  have  named,  Bulgaria  might  extend  her 
dominion  as  far  as  the  Tchatdalja  line  of  fortifications.  The  line  Enos- 
Media  had  formerly  been  the  peace  objective  of  the  Bulgarians.  Such  a 
border  would  join  to  Bulgaria  nearly  all  of  the  Bulgarians  still  under 
Turkish  rule,  and  would  also  have  the  desired  military  advantages.  A  part 
of  this  territory  was  ceded  by  Turkey  in  August,  1915,  as  a  gage  for 
Bulgaria's  entrance  in  the  War  on  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers  group. 

But  there  were  also  those  extremists  in  Bulgaria  who  thought  that 
all  of  Thrace  and  the  Gallipoli  peninsula  ought  to  be  taken  from  the 
Turks,  Constantinople  included.  These  men  were  trying  to  show  the  world 
that  this  would  be  the  best  way  of  settling  the  problem  of  the  control 
of  the  waterways.  With  the  Bulgarians  in  possession  of  the  western 
shores  of  the  Dardanelles,  Sea  of  Marmora  and  Bosphorus,  the  Greeks, 
possibly,  re-established  in  the  western  part  of  what  had  been  Phrygia 
Minor,  anciently,  and  with  the  Turk  limited  to  Anatolia  north  of  the 
Gulf  of  Ismid  it  would  be  easy  enough  to  open  the  Dardanelles  to  all 
shipping,  war  or  peace.  With  three  states  abutting  upon  these  bodies  of 
water  it  would  be  simple  to  make  the  straits  neutral  or  international,  since 
each  of  the  governments  involved  could  claim  them  only  as  far  as  their 
Thalsohle — central  channel.     To  certain  Russian  statesmen  that  appealed 


118  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

strongly.  Half  a  loaf  was  l^etter  than  none,  and  there  was  no  telling  when 
trouble  among  the  Balkanites  would  lead  to  the  "realization"  of  Russian 
"desires," 

The  Turks  were  well  acquainted  with  this  scheme,  as  I  found,  and 
could  not  but  discountenance  the  sale  of  the  two  American  battleships  to 
the  Greeks.  They  did  that,  but  stopped  a  little  short,  so  far  as  I  know, 
of  making  a  protest  to  the  Department  of  State.  The  United  States 
ambassador,  Mr.  Morgenthau,  knew  too  little  of  the  profession  upon  which 
he  had  embarked  from  a  real  estate  office,  and  was  too  timid  to  understand 
the  full  meaning  of  the  transaction,  and  the  government  in  Washington 
does  not  seem  to  have  given  the  matter  much  thought,  which,  in  regard 
to  politics  in  Europe,  was  living  up  to  its  traditions.  In  those  halcyon 
days,  moreover,  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  still  bickered  over 
millions,  being  as  yet  unused  to  the  reckless  appropriation  of  billions,  and 
the  twelve  million  dollars  for  what  would  have  been  scrap  iron  in  a  few 
months  looked  very  good  to  the  watchdogs  of  the  treasury. 

To  the  argument  of  the  Ottoman  government  that  the  "Goeben"  and 
"Breslau*'  had  been  bought  to  offset  the  increase  in  the  naval  armament 
of  Greece  produced  by  the  "Idaho"  and  "Mississippi"  the  diplomatists  of 
the  Triple  Entente  could  make  no  effective  rebuttal.  There  are  some  facts 
which  even  a  diplomatist  can  not  deny,  although  they  are  few  in  number, 
withal. 

The  sale  of  the  two  German  ships  could  be  attacked  from  another 
angle,  however.  It  was  not  a  bona  Ude  transaction,  claimed  the  British, 
French  and  Russian  governments  and  their  ambassadors.  To  this  the 
Ottoman  government  replied  that  while  the  transfer  would  seem  to  suffer 
from  this  aspect,  it  was  nevertheless  bona  Ude. 

Turkey  had  ordered  two  modern  battleships  in  Great  Britain.  That 
she  had  not  ordered  them  in  Germany  was  due  to  the  fact  that  her  naval 
service  just  then  was  in  the  hands  of  the  British  Naval  Mission  to  Turkey, 
headed  by  Admiral  Limpus,  just  as  her  army  was  under  the  administrative 
control  of  the  German  Military  Mission  to  Turkey,  commanded  by  Field 
Marshall  Liman  von  Sanders  Pasha.  The  two  missions  were  commis 
voyageurs  in  more  respects  than  one,  and  bought  each  in  their  own  country 
what  the  Turkish  national  defense  scheme  needed. 

The  Ottoman  government  pointed  out  that  the  German  commander. 
Admiral  Souchon,  had  sought  refuge  in  the  Dardanelles,  before  an  over- 
whelming force  of  enemies,  and  that  sending  him  back  into  the  Mediter- 
ranean, to  either  go  down  in  battle  or  suffer  capture,  might  be  construed 
an  unfriendly  act  on  the  part  of  the  German  government.  In  fact  the 
only  alternative  available  was  internment.  The  sale  of  the  ships  obviated 
internment.    The  Ottoman  government  had  the  right  to  buy  the  ships, 


A  BALKAN  PROBLEM  IN  THE  MAKING  119 

especially  since  the  Creek  government  also  had  bought  ships.  Would  it 
not  be  better  to  consider  the  incident  closed? 

But  that  was  impossible,  of  course.  Despite  the  evasion  practiced  by 
the  Ottoman  ministers  the  sale  of  the  "Goeben"  and  ''Breslau"  could  not 
be  dissociated  from  its  sinister  aspects.  Admiral  Souchon,  who  had  come 
into  the  Dardanelles  as  commander  of  the  German  Squadron  in  the 
Mediterranean,  and  his  officers  and  men  remained  on  the  two  ships,  though 
already  they  were  "Sultan  Jawus  Selim,"  and  "Midillih."  To  make  mat- 
ters worse  the  Ottoman  government  dismissed  the  British  Naval  Mission, 
and  on  September  27th  closed  the  Dardanelles  and  Bosphorus. 

Diplomacy  on  the  Golden  Horn  was  moving  rapidly  and  in  a  direction 
opposite  to  that  desired  in  Ivondon,  Paris  and  Petrograd.  The  immediate 
effect  of  the  closing  of  the  Dardanelles  was  that  Russia  could  not  import 
from  Great  Britain  and  France  war  materials  she  urgently  needed,  nor 
could  she  exchange  therefor  the  wheat  and  other  foodstuffs  wanted  in  the 
countries  of  her  allies.    That,  indeed,  was  the  purpose  of  the  closing. 

An  American  Ambassador  Is  Heard  From 

Though  "forcing"  the  Dardanelles  had  ever  been  a  favorite  phrase 
of  those  dissatisfied  with  the  treaties  on  the  status  of  the  straits — tem- 
porarily, to  be  sure — the  Russian,  French  and  British  governments  did 
not  immediately  speak  of  that. 

Sir  Louis  Mallet,  the  British  ambassador,  especially  would  seem  to 
have  taken  the  closing  of  the  strait  to  heart.  According  to  statements  made 
by  Mr.  Morgenthau  he  appealed  to  the  ambassador  of  the  United  States, 
to  whom  he  suggested,  if  the  report  is  to  be  believed,  that  the  two  of 
them  call  together  on  the  Grand  Vizier  and  enter  a  protest.  At  any  rate 
Mr.  Morgenthau  selected  to  go  alone,  and  according  to  his  own  admission 
informed  the  Ottoman  premier  somewhat  as  follows: 

"You  know  this  means  war!" 

I  think  it  is  the  practice,  usually,  of  ambassadors  to  first  get  in  touch 
with  their  government  before  they  enter  climaxic  protests,  nor  do  they, 
except  on  specific  instruction,  ever  mention  war  as  the  only  alternative  for 
something  which  a  government  has  done.  If  the  State  Department  of 
the  United  States  should  be  an  exception  to  this  rule,  which  I  can  not 
believe,  it  would  be  time  for  Congress  and  the  American  people  to  look 
into  this  matter.  There  is  no  assurance,  it  so  happens,  that  an  indiscretion 
of  that  sort  is  always  in  the  interest  of  the  state. 

The  closing  of  the  Dardanelles  was  to  the  governments  of  the  Triple 
Entente  the  signal  that  it  was  time  to  act.  Sir  Louis  Mallet,  M.  Bompard, 
ambassador  of  the  French  republic,  and  Mons.  N.   M.  de  Giers,  the 


120  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Russian  ambassador,  had  matters  in  hand  at  Constantinople,  while  Sir 
Edward  Grey,  M.  Viviani,  and  M.  Sazonoff  handled  this  great  problem 
at  home.  To  have  the  strait  closed  was  a  serious  matter  of  itself.  To 
have  Turkey  an  ally  of  the  Germans  was  not  much  worse,  of  course,  as 
it  then  seemed.  But  at  best  something  had  to  be  done  to  open  the 
strait  again.    It  was  a  case  of  war,  or  of  concessions  to  the  Turks. 

The  oflfer  of  concessions  was  made.  The  interminable  transactions 
resolved  themselves  into  this:  The  governments  of  the  Triple  Entente 
would  guarantee  the  integrity  of  the  territory  of  the  Ottoman  empire 
for  the  space  of  thirty  years  against  all  comers,  if  the  Ottoman  government 
consented  to  what  in  the  main  would  be  a  neutrality  of  benevolence  toward 
the  countries  of  the  Entente. 

Said  Halim  Pasha,  the  grand  vizier,  was  not  the  only  one  who  at 
first  gave  at  least  a  willing  ear,  if  not  a  willing  mind,  to  the  proposal. 
Talaat  Bey  also  was  more  than  interested,  though  not  by  any  means  very 
sympathetic.  The  grand  vizier  had  thoroughly  enjoyed,  as  he  told  me 
once,  his  course  at  Oxford  and  his  intercourse  with  Englishmen  in  Great 
Britain  and  Egypt,  from  which  latter  country  he  hailed.  But  while  he 
was  fond  of  the  everyday-things  of  the  English  he  had  no  great  opinion 
of  "their  political  morality,"  as  he  put  it.  Egypt  was  already  little  more 
than  a  British  colony,  since  its  abandonment  by  the  French  to  Great 
Britain  as  a  pawn  in  the  entente  cordiale  and  consideration  for  a  free  hand 
in  Morocco. 

Being  a  good  Mohammedan  the  grand  vizier  also  resented  that  the 
world  of  Islam  was  everywhere  passing  under  the  suzerainty  of  Great 
Britain  and  France.  Of  promises  made  by  any  of  the  Great  Powers  he 
had  the  poorest  opinion.  That  Turkey  was  perishing  on  the  good  promises 
of  others,  was  a  favorite  way  of  putting  it  with  him.  Talaat  Bey,  again, 
saw  in  the  Young  Turk  Party  the  only  salvation  of  his  country,  and  had 
concluded  that  with  the  acts  of  that  party  the  Ottoman  empire  would 
either  rise  or  fall.  An  alternative  he  could  not  see,  as  he  admitted  to  me 
in  an  interview,  after  Turkey  was  in  the  War.  A  victorious  Triple  Entente 
would  dismember  Turkey,  no  matter  what  promises  her  statesmen  might 
have  made.  Turkey,  he  knew  full  well,  had  in  the  past  continued  a  state 
by  the  grace  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  anti-Russian  Balance  of  Power  in 
Europe.  A  victory  of  the  Triple  Entente  meant  a  defeat  for  the  Central 
Powers  camp,  of  course,  which  in  its  turn  was  equivalent  for  Turkey  of 
being  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Russia  for  a 
time.  Seeing  things  in  that  light  left  the  Young  Turk  cabinet  no  other 
course  open  but  to  join  the  Central  Powers  sooner  or  later.  The  wholly 
fictitious  "session  of  the  Crown  Council  at  Potsdam,  July  5,  1914,"  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it. 


AN  AMERICAN  AMBASSADOR  IS  HEARD  FROM      121 

The  alternative  was  to  remain  strictly  neutral.  Even  that  was  difficult, 
regardless  of  whatever  viewpoint  was  taken.  For  one  thing,  the  Young 
Turks,  with  all  their  faults,  were  patriots.  To  remain  strictly  neutral 
imposed  upon  the  Turk  a  sort  of  conduct  which  neither  side  would  like. 

With  the  War  over,  Turkey  again  would  have  to  live  by  and  on 
the  clash  of  interest  of  the  Powers  of  Europe.  To  Enver  Pasha,  especially, 
that  was  a  most  unpalatable  fare,  though  Said  Halim  Pasha,  Talaat  Bey, 
and  the  few  other  men  who  had  anything  to  say  in  the  matter,  were  no 
better  pleased  with  this  prospect.  There  would  be  a  continuation  of  capitu- 
lations and  the  revenues  of  the  empire  would  still  be  in  the  hands  of  the 
foreign  capitalists  who  ran  the  Dette  Publique  in  Stamboul. 

With  the  occidental  ideas  of  statecraft  with  which  these  men  occupied 
themselves  that  outlook  did  not  in  any  way  harmonize.  They  had  promoted 
the  Revolution,  and  the  elimination  of  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid,  for  the 
avowed  purpose  of  making  the  Ottoman  empire  an  equal  among  nations. 
In  this  they  had  failed  not  only  in  practical  respects  but  also  in  principle. 
But  it  has  ever  been  difficult  for  men  to  be  fair  judges  of  themselves. 
Last  but  not  least  the  Ottoman  government  had  to  take  into  account  that 
an  attitude  of  benevolent  neutrality  toward  the  Triple  Entente  would 
have  serious  consequences  in  case  the  Central  Powers  should  emerge  from 
the  War  with  victory  on  their  side. 

Though  the  military  aspect  of  the  situation  in  Europe  was  just  then 
not  in  favor  of  Germany  and  her  ally,  the  men  in  Stamboul  knew  that 
the  resources  of  the  German  empire  were  far  greater  than  others  were 
pleased  to  believe.  They  all  realized  that  they  had  in  their  hands  the  means 
to  embarrass  at  least,  if  not  actually  handicap  greatly,  one  of  the  Entente 
powers,  Russia,  by  keeping  the  Dardanelles  closed.  That  had  been  done 
already — with  the  approbation,  if  this  counted  for  anything,  of  every  Turk, 
no  matter  whether  "Old"  or  "Young." 

Upon  Russia  every  Turk  looked  as  the  arch  enemy,  and  Russia,  indeed, 
had  merited  that  reputation.  Constantinople  and  her  waterways  were  still, 
as  they  had  been  of  yore,  the  multum  in  parvo  of  the  state  of  which  the  city 
was  the  capital.  Without  Constantinople  there  would  be  no  state — without 
Stamboul  there  would  be  nothing.  Geographic  factors  and  mixed  popula- 
tions produce  such  anachronisms.  The  Greek  and  Armenian  subjects  of 
Sultan  cared  little  enough  for  the  Ottoman  government.  What  interest 
they  had  in  the  empire  was  represented  by  the  capital.  To  perpetuate  this 
City  on  the  Golden  Horn,  and  its  many  suburbs  along  the  same  body 
of  water  and  on  the  shores  of  the  iMarmora  and  Bosphorus,  was  to  them 
patriotism — a  disemboweled  patriotism,  perhaps,  but  still  the  little  they 
could  have  under  the  circumstances. 

Thus  it  came  that  even  the  Greeks  and  Armenians  rejoiced  a  little, 


122  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

for  a  day  or  so,  when  the  Dardanelles  were  closed.  They  were  less 
pleased  as  the  drudgery  of  war  started,  as  it  did  presently,  when  the 
Ottoman  government  objected  to  the  presence  at  the  entrance  of  the 
Bosphorus  of  Russian  mine-laying  ships.  Negotiations  came  to  an  end, 
relations  were  severed,  and  on  November  3rd,  the  Allied  fleet  let  the  Turks 
know  that  war  was  on.  The  bombardment  of  the  Turkish  batteries 
at  Sid-il-Bahr  and  Kum  Kale  lasted  a  scant  fifteen  minutes.  Some  200 
shots  were  exchanged,  and  one  of  them  set  off  a  powder  magazine  in 
Sid-il-Bahr,  not  exactly  an  auspicious  start  for  the  Turks. 

When  and  Why  German  Diplomacy  Won 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  concerning  the  activity  of  the  German 
ambassador  at  Constantinople.  That  Baron  von  Wangenheim  was  an  able 
diplomatist  is  true  enough.  Indeed,  from  the  angle  of  events  he  was  the 
best  of  the  German  diplomatists.  But  the  angle  of  events  is  nearly  always 
a  poor  guide.  Had  the  situation  of  the  Turks  been  different.  Baron  von 
Wangenheim  would  have  failed  as  completely  as  did  most  of  his  German 
confreres.   I  say  that  on  the  ground  that  I  knew  the  baron  thoroughly  well. 

The  German  ambassador  was  principally  able  in  so  far  as  he  did  not 
g^ve  the  natural  direction  of  events  any  violent  promotion,  and  that,  after 
all,  distinguishes  the  good  from  the  bad  diplomatist.  True  enough,  some 
diplomatists  have  flattered  themselves  that  they  made  this  or  that  ally  for 
their  country.  The  impartial  student  of  human  affairs  has  ever  doubted 
that.  What  a  diplomatist  can  do  is :  To  engage  in  acts  of  provocation  that 
will  make  enemies.  Acts  that  would  make  friends  lie  entirely  beyond  his 
reach.  The  system  wills  it  so.  Before  two  nations,  or  even  two  govern- 
ments, become  so  friendly  to  one  another  that  one  will  spill  blood  and  dis- 
sipate treasure  for  the  other  there  must  be  a  community  of  interests,  be  that 
racial,  economic  or  political.  It  seems  to  me  that  even  the  most  conceited 
diplomatist  and  statesman  can  afford  to  admit  that  much. 

What  Baron  von  Wangenheim  did  in  Constantinople  was  to  present 
the  case  of  the  Central  Powers  in  as  favorable  a  light  as  possible,  in  which 
respect  his  position  was  not  dissimilar  to  that  of  the  representative  of  a 
firm  trying  to  induce  another  house  to  do  business  with  it.  Though  the 
contrary  has  been  maintained,  I  would  indeed  like  to  meet  the  man  who 
could  influence  Talaat  Bey,  who  justly  deserves  the  surname :  The  stubborn. 
How  little  the  Ottoman  minister  of  the  interior  could  be  swayed  was  shown 
later  when  Baron  von  Wangenheim  insisted  that  the  government  in 
Stamboul  put  an  end  to  the  deportations  of  the  Armenians. 

In  view  of  what  has  been  said  it  should  be  news  that  in  July  of  1915, 
Baron  von  Wangenheim  presented  to  the  Ottoman  government,  on  behalf  of 


WHEN  AND  WHY  GERMAN  DIPLOMACY  WON        123 

the  Armenians,  what  amounted  to  an  ultimatum.  The  religious  societies  of 
Germany  had  finally  managed  to  present  the  case  of  the  Armenians  to  the 
emperor  and  had  prevailed  upon  him  to  interest  himself  in  these  fellow- 
Christians.  The  Foreign  Office  in  Berlin  did  not  like  this  interference  in 
an  Ottoman  affair  that  was  considered  strictly  an  internal  matter.  For  all 
that,  it  instructed  Baron  von  Wangenheim  to  take  the  matter  up  with 
a  little  more  energy.  This  was  done.  But  Talaat  Bey  casually  informed 
the  German  ambassador  that  the  Turkish  government  would  permit  no 
interference  with  anything  that  had  no  bearing  upon  Turkish- German 
relations.  Baron  von  Wangenheim  would  point  to  the  evil  repute  Germany 
was  getting  as  the  result  of  the  treatment  given  the  Armenians.  His 
plea,  that  the  agents  of  the  Entente  used  the  case  for  propaganda  calculated 
to  further  hurt  a  government  already  laboring  under  the  handicap  of  the 
invasion  of  Belgium  and  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  would  elicit  from 
Talaat  Bey  nothing  but  the  rather  cynical  remark  that  Germany,  "if 
ashamed  of  her  company  with  Turkey,  could  go  her  own  way.'' 

Some  men  in  Berlin,  possibly  the  emperor  himself,  found  such  conduct 
on  the  part  of  Talaat  Bey  a  little  too  presumptions.  Baron  von  Wangen- 
heim was  instructed  to  demand  the  immediate  cessation  of  the  measures 
employed  against  the  Armenians  and  place  the  possible  abandonment  of 
Turkey  by  Germany  as  the  alternative.  When  Talaat  Bey  heard  that  he 
smiled,  as  usual,  and  told  the  German  ambassador  to  inform  the  German 
government  that  in  Turkey  it  was  the  'Ottoman  government  that  was 
supreme,  and  that,  if  it  was  so  minded,  the  German  government  could  go 
its  own  way  without  delay.  It  would  be  best,  anyway,  if  the  Imperial 
German  government  began  to  realize  a  little  more  that  in  Turkey  it  had 
not  found  a  vassal  but  an  ally — an  equal. 

For  the  German  government  that  was  a  bitter  pill  to  swallow.  Nothing 
of  this  was  permitted  to  get  into  the  press,  lest  the  German  public  become 
alarmed.  After  that  Baron  von  Wangenheim  refused  to  entertain  similar 
requests,  and  in  the  interest  of  good  relations  made  a  trip  home,  though 
his  health  also  needed  a  little  more  consideration  than  it  had  been  given  by 
him. 

On  the  whole  the  German  diplomatists  in  Constantinople  had  a  very 
strenuous  time  with  the  Turks  in  Stamboul.  Even  the  able  and  shrewd 
Dr.  Richard  von  Kiihlmann,  at  that  time  conseiller  of  the  Germany  em- 
bassy, had  his  hands  full,  despite  the  fact  that  he  was  dealing  only  with  the 
overflow  of  friction.  Not  all  of  this  was  due  to  Germano-Turkish  inter- 
national relations.  For  the  purpose  of  promoting  the  interests  of  Field 
Marshall  von  der  Goltz  Pasha,  at  that  time  commander  of  the  Ottoman 
Second  Army  in  Thrace,  and  formerly  chief  of  the  German  Military 
Mission  to  Turkey,  a  large  and  influential  element  at  the  German  embassy 


124  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

had  made  up  its  mind  to  effect  the  recall  of  Field  Marshall  Liman  von 
Sanders  Pasha,  then  head  of  the  mission  and  commander  of  the  Ottoman 
forces  on  Gallipoli.  It  was  charged  that  Liman  Pasha  had  made  a  very 
poor  job  of  defending  the  peninsula.  So  far  as  could  be  judged  the 
complaint  was  unjustified.  I  had  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  at  the 
Dardanelles  and  on  Gallipoli  and  knew  what  difficulties  Liman  Pasha  had 
encountered  most  successfully.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  did  his  best 
with  the  means  at  his  disposal.  For  all  that  the  intriguants  at  the  German 
embassy  persisted  that  he  ought  to  be  removed. 

Since  Enver  Pasha,  minister  of  war  and  vice-generalissimo  of  the 
Ottoman  army,  was  not  yet  through  congratulating  himself  that  the  landing 
at  Sid-il-Bahr  and  Ariburnu  had  not  resulted  in  worse,  it  was  rather  dif- 
ficult to  get  his  attention  on  this  subject.  I  am  sure  that  Enver  Pasha  had 
a  case  of  gooseflesh  whenever  he  thought  himself  in  the  role  of  commander 
in  chief  on  Gallipoli.  An  uglier  job  could  not  be  found.  Quite  impatiently, 
therefore,  he  told  Baron  von  Wangenheim  one  day  that,  while  the  German 
general  staff  and  the  German  emperor  could  not  be  prevented  from  re- 
calling Liman  Pasha  and  appointing  another  man  as  chief  of  the  German 
Military  Mission  to  Turkey,  he  would  deem  it  a  great  favor  if  he  would 
be  allowed  to  have  Liman  Pasha  enter  entirely  the  Ottoman  military 
service  as  commander  on  Gallipoli.  That  ended  it.  Baron  von  Wangen- 
heim had  once  more  put  his  foot  into  it,  as  the  saying  goes,  and  he  had 
done  this  against  his  better  judgment.  Instances  of  that  sort  were  many, 
and  all  of  them  went  to  prove  that  so  far  as  the  post  at  Constantinople  was 
concerned  it  would  have  been  better  had  the  German  Foreign  Office  for- 
gotten that  there  was  such  a  thing. 

Diplomatic  Sauce  for  Goose  and  Gander 

The  attitude  of  the  German  government  toward  the  Armenians  was 
not  always  what  I  have  pictured  here.  At  first  it  was  entirely  different — 
essentially  Prussian.  On  a  trip  I  made  through  Asia  Minor  in  May,  1915, 
I  accidentally  encountered  a  large  column  of  deported  Armenians  in  the 
Cilician  Gates  in  the  Taurus  Mountains.  Though  I  saw  none  of  the 
cruelties  the  Turks  have  later  been  charged  with,  and  I  hold  brief  for 
neither  Turk  nor  Armenian,  and  flatter  myself  with  being  somewhat  of  a 
truth-loving  man,  I  could  not  but  sympathize  with  the  four  thousand-odd 
women  and  children  and  decrepit  men,  who  on  a  cold  and  rainy  day 
were  crossing  over  a  mountain  pass  in  a  wilderness  where  even  in  worse 
weather  they  would  have  been  unable  to  find  shelter,  food  or  comfort. 

The  inquiries  I  made  at  that  time  and  later  have  caused  me  to  believe 
that  Turkish  ineptness,  more  than  intentional  brutality,  was  responsible  for 


DIPLOMATIC  SAUCE  FOR  GOOSE  AND  GANDER        125 

the  hardships  the  Armenians  were  subjected  to.  On  my  return  to  Constan- 
tinople I  wrote  of  the  matter  and  submitted  it  to  the  censors.  These  good 
men  were  horror-struck  at  my  audacity,  to  think  that  they  would  permit 
anything  of  the  sort  to  go  through,  but  were  rather  apologetic  when  they 
handed  the  articles  back  to  me.  When  every  other  means  to  get  the  story 
to  the  United  States  had  failed,  I  appealed  to  Baron  von  Wangenheim, 
making  it  clear  to  him  that  as  the  correspondent  of  a  neutral  press  it  was 
my  duty  to  get  this  piece  of  news  out.  The  ambassador  agreed  with  me, 
and  was  willing  to  dispatch  the  copy  as  far  as  Berlin  by  means  of  the 
courier — Feldjager — of  his  own  embassy.  But  it  was  his  opinion  that  in 
Berlin  my  dispatches  and  mail  articles  would  be  held  up,  and  that  nothing 
could  be  gained,  then,  by  getting  them  that  far. 

I  decided  to  try  some  other  avenue,  and  finally  found  it  in  the 
service  of  a  train  conductor,  who  promised  to  mail  the  matter  from  the 
Bulgarian  frontier  railroad  station.  My  articles  were  never  delivered 
to  the  headquarters  of  the  news  service  at  Berlin,  instead  I  was  ultimately 
informed  that  I  had  no  right  to  evade  the  Turkish  censorship.  The  informa- 
tion came  from  the  German  government,  and  the  attache  of  the  German 
embassy  in  Constantinople  who  conveyed  it  took  pains  to  have  me  under- 
stand that  the  suppression  of  an  uprising  in  times  of  war,  as  in  times  of 
peace,  no  matter  what  means  employed,  was  a  right  which  all  governments 
reserved  for  themselves,  and  that  so  far  no  government  was  known  that  had 
made  common  cause  with  rebels.  It  was  a  phase  of  sovereignty,  etc.,  etc., 
etc. 

Sovereignty  does  cover  a  multitude  of  things,  when  applied  propa- 
gandically.  The  uprising  of  the  Armenians  was  one  thing,  it  seemed,  that 
of  the  Irish  quite  another. 

Before  I  proceed  with  the  general  depiction  of  diplomacy  in  Turkey 
I  must  devote  a  little  more  space  to  the  United  States  embassy  at  that  point. 

Ex-ambassador  Morgenthau  has  in  his  book  devoted  considerable  space 
to  the  occasions  on  which  he  was  of  some  use  to  the  diplomatic  representa- 
tives of  the  governments  of  the  Triple  Entente.  He  has  also  made  it  clear 
that  from  the  very  first  he  was  not  in  sympathy  with  the  diplomatists, 
diplomacy  and  general  policies,  of  the  Central  Powers,  all  of  them  being 
more  or  less  noxious  to  his  fine  principles.  To  have  been  of  special 
importance  to  Sir  Louis  Mallet,  and  of  gratuitous  service  to  him  at  the  time 
of  the  closing  of  the  Dardanelles,  and  again  later,  is  one  of  the  things  he  is 
proud  of.  Yet  in  his  neutrality  proclamations,  and  especially  in  his  appeal 
to  the  American  people  to  observe  a  true  neutrality,  President  Wilson  had 
emphasized  the  necessity  for  an  impartiality  in  words  as  well  as  in  conduct. 

But  the  books  of  diplomatists  must  not  be  taken  too  seriously.  The 
ambassador  who  avers  that  from  the  very  inception  of  trouble  he  was 


126  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

with  this  or  with  that  side  may  be  doing  nothing  more  than  presenting  just 
one  side  of  his  attitude,  with  sHght  exaggerations,  possibly.  The  fact  in  this 
case  is,  that  Mr.  Morgenthau  was  well  liked  by  the  German  diplomatists  in 
Pera,  and,  long  after  the  outbreak  of  the  War,  was  not  averse  to  being 
known  as  a  friend  of  Baron  von  Wangenheim.  I  happen  to  know  that  the 
German  ambassador  consulted  the  American  ambassador  on  subjects  that 
did  not  at  all  concern  the  latter.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  no  more 
constant  caller  at  the  American  embassy  than  the  Marquis  Pallavicini,  the 
Austro-Hungarian  ambassador,  and  the  relations  between  the  Central 
Powers  and  United  States  diplomatists  were  rather  more  cordial  than  what 
Mr.  Morgenthau  would  have  us  believe.  All  of  which  would  be  of  no 
consequence  to  the  general  public,  were  it  not  that  it  seems  necessary,  in 
view  of  the  cost  of  the  Great  Disaster,  and  its  effect  upon  the  world  in 
general,  to  portray  the  diplomatic  service  as  it  is. 

The  United  States  diplomatists  in  Europe  during  the  Great  War  were 
in  their  local  spheres  the  least  omnipotent  and  omniscient  of  any.  The 
chiefs  of  the  several  missions  were  not  hommes  de  carriere.  They  were 
successful  men  of  affairs,  whom  campaign  contributions  and  political  party 
favors  landed  at  their  diplomatic  posts.  They  possessed  neither  the  training 
nor  the  experience  to  make  them  good  diplomatic  envoys  in  a  world  entirely 
foreign  to  them  in  political  practice,  ideals,  and  social  systems. 

A  Diplomatist  in  a  Quandary 

When  Mr.  Morgenthau  arrived  in  Constantinople,  the  officials  in 
Stamboul  did  their  best  to  make  him  feel  at  home  and  at  ease.  Among 
the  men  who  especially  cultivated  the  new  United  States  ambassador  was 
Enver  Pasha,  who  was  a  welcome  guest  at  the  teas  and  luncheons  of  Mme. 
Morgenthau  long  after  Turkey  had  entered  the  War.  Talaat  Bey,  too,  was 
on  the  best  terms  with  the  American  ambassador,  and  so  were  a  number 
of  other  officials  and  officers,  even  though,  as  has  been  averred,  they  lacked 
the  means  to  buy  uniforms  and  wore,  as  the  Turk  always  does,  the 
regulation  Stambuli — a  frock-coat  with  a  high  collar  of  clerical  cut.  By 
and  large  the  American  ambassador  was  rather  friendly  with  the  Turks, 
as  the  diplomatic  representative  of  a  friendly  power  ought  to  be;  that  he 
was  this  is  proved,  moreover,  by  a  statement  made  to  me  by  M.  Haim 
Nahoum,  Grand  Rabbi  of  Turkey,  who  took  particular  delight  in  pointing 
out  that  the  really  congenial  qualities  of  the  new  American  ambassador  had 
contributed  greatly  toward  making  the  Ottoman  government  amenable  to 
certain  requests  that  had  been  made  in  regard  to  the  interests  of  the  Jewish 
colonists  in  Palestine. 

It  may  be  presumed  that  there  are  few  people  who  expected  Jews 
generally  to  espouse  the  interests  of  Russia  at  the  outbreak  of  the  European 


A  DIPLOMATIST  IN  A  QUANDARY  127 

War  and  for  many  months  afterward.  To  be  frank  about  it,  I  was  one  of 
those  who  found  such  an  attitude  perfectly  logical.  Whatever  the  facts 
back  of  the  pogroms  may  have  been,  the  truth  is  that  the  Russian  govern- 
ment had  been  guilty  of  gross  negligence,  to  say  the  least,  in  permitting 
such  atrocities  to  happen. 

When  relations  were  severed  by  Russia  with  Turkey,  the  care  of 
Russian  interests  in  the  Ottoman  empire  was  given  into  the  hands  of  the 
Italian  embassy  at  Constantinople.  When  Italy  became  involved  in  the 
War  with  Turkey,  Russian  interests  were  once  more  out  in  the  street,  so 
to  speak.  The  government  in  Petrograd  requested  the  United  States  to 
take  charge  of  them,  and  the  State  Department,  despite  the  fact  that  the 
American  embassy  in  Pera  was  already  overcrowded  with  the  care  of 
foreigners  and  their  property  in  Turkey,  asked  Mr.  Morgenthau  to  care 
for  the  Russian  subjects  and  their  interests  also. 

The  American  ambassador  had  a  caller  one  fine  summer's  morning  in 
1915.  The  person  in  question  had  visited  the  embassy  on  routine  matters, 
but  had  been  asked  by  Mr.  Antonian,  private  secretary  of  the  ambassador, 
to  step  into  the  sanctum  sanctorum. 

The  ambassador  seemed  very  much  agitated.  He  asked  the  caller  to 
be  seated,  and  then  resumed  his  perambulations  about  the  room.  After 
a  while  he  stopped  before  the  visitor.  There  was  no  doubt  that  he  was 
greatly  perturbed. 

He  had  been  asked  by  his,  the  American,  government,  began  the 
ambassador,  to  take  charge  of  Russian  interests  in  Turkey. 

"To  comply  with  the  request  is  hardly  possible  for  me,"  he  continued. 
"What  would  my  people  in  New  York  say  to  it — what  would  Jews 
anywhere  say  to  it,  if  I  took  over  the  care  of  Russian  interests  in  this 
country?  Can  you  imagine  what  they  would  say?  They  would  loathe 
me  for  doing  it.  How  could  a  self-respecting  Jew  do  anything  of  the 
kind?  How  could  he  lend  himself  to  the  protection  of  the  subjects  and 
their  properties  of  a  government  which  for  centuries  has  ruthlessly  and 
systematically  persecuted  and  abused  members  of  his  race  ?  I  won't  do  it. 
I  can't  do  it?" 

The  caller  did  not  know  whether  or  no  an  expression  of  opinion  was 
wanted  and  remained  silent.  The  ambassador  resumed  his  peregrinations 
about  the  room,  leaving  the  other  to  review  pogroms,  the  refusal  to  recognize 
passports  of  the  United  States  issued  to  Jewish  citizens,  the  abrogation  on 
that  account  by  the  U.  S.  Senate  of  the  Russian  commercial  treaties,  things 
that  happened  outside  the  port  of  Odessa,  and  what  not. 

After  a  while  the  ambassador  stopped  again  before  the  caller. 

"I  would  like  to  hear  what  you  think  of  it,"  he  said.  "You  have 
knocked  about  this  world  long  enough  to  have  an  opinion  on  the  subject." 


128  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

The  caller  said  that  he  did  not  wish  to  give  advice  on  such  a  matter. 
It  was  hard  to  see  how  any  Jew  could  take  care  of  Russian  interests.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  ambassador  would  have  to  consider  that  he  was  not 
a  Jew  in  this  instance  but  the  diplomatic  representative  of  the  United 
States,  a  government  at  peace  with  Russia,  despite  the  abrogation  of  the 
commercial  treaty  in  retaliation  of  Russia's  discrimination  against  American 
citizens  of  Jewish  race,  and  that  governments  at  peace  with  one  another 
could  not  very  well  refuse  to  be  mutually  of  service  in  times  such  as  they 
were. 

Rather  than  take  that  view,  said  the  American  ambassador,  he  would 
resign.  While  he  appreciated  the  trust  placed  in  him,  and  the  honor  ac- 
corded, in  being  given  a  diplomatic  appointment,  the  State  Department 
could  not  expect  him  to  do  something  that  savored  of  an  insult  self- 
administered.  He  would  resign,  if  the  government  insisted  upon  his  taking 
over  Russian  interests  in  Turkey. 

The  caller  saw  the  substance  of  a  first-class  news  dispatch  in  the 
interview,  and  suggested  something  to  that  effect.  To  that  the  ambassador 
would  not  listen,  however.  There  would  be  time  enough  in  a  few  days. 
The  few  days  never  came,  of  course. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  I  am  not  a  great  admirer  of  anonymity  I  will 
state  that  I  am  the  caller. 

Diplomatic  Omnipotence  at  Close  Range 

Diplomatists  off  post  are  fond  of  having  others  believe  that  they  were 
not  far  from  being  omnipotent  while  accredited.  That  applies  particularly 
to  those  who  served  last  in  a  country  with  whom  their  own  government  has 
gone  to  war. 

I  met  in  Constantinople  two  excellent  gentlemen :  Captain  J.  P.  Morton, 
commander  of  the  U.  S.  Cruiser  "Scorpion,"  the  American  stationaire 
in  the  Golden  Horn,  and  Captain  R.  H.  Williams,  of  the  U.  S.  Coast 
Artillery,  attending  to  relief  work  in  Turkey.  The  first  of  the  officers  was 
also  naval  attache,  while  the  latter  had  an  uncertain  status  as  military 
attache.  Both  were  very  much  interested  in  what  was  going  on  at  the 
Dardanelles  and  on  Gallipoli,  and  had  so  far  been  unable  to  get  to  either 
point ;  both  of  them  felt  that  the  affairs  at  the  gates  of  Constantinople  were 
of  the  utmost  importance  to  military  observers.  Captain  Williams  was 
keen  to  judge  the  effect  of  shell  fire  on  the  Turkish  emplacements  along 
the  Dardanelles,  since  coast  defense  is  an  important  factor  in  the  national 
security  of  the  United  States,  and  Captain  Morton,  also,  showed  the 
greatest  interest.  Here  was  a  case  in  which  two  members  of  the  arms 
which  were  opposing  one  another  in  attack  and  defense,  navy  and  coast 


DIPLOMATIC  OMNIPOTENCE  AT  CLOSE  RANGE      129 

artillery,  were  within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  greatest  demonstration  that 
had  ever  been  seen,  but  had  found  their  ambassador  unable  to  get  them 
there. 

I  had,  so  far  as  this  was  permissible,  and  within  my  pledges  to  the 
Ottoman  minister  of  war,  given  to  Captain  Williams  what  data  I  could. 
Though  I  had  had  some  artillery  experience  myself,  my  knowledge  was 
confined  to  field  artillery,  and  for  the  purposes  of  Captain  Williams  was 
not  definite  enough.  He  was  working  on  a  report  to  his  department,  and 
to  make  this  complete  he  required  better  and  more  technical  information 
than  I  could  give  him.  Captain  Morton,  also,  had  occupied  himself 
similarly,  and  on  March  16th,  Mr.  Morgenthau  had  been  to  see  himself 
what  little  damage  up  to  then  the  British  and  French  fleets  had  been  able 
to  inflict.  In  the  major  attack  of  March  18th  the  damage  done  to  the 
Turkish  "forts"  and  emplacements  along  the  strait  was  more  extensive, 
but  not  fatal.  But  these  are  things  that  must,  for  military  purposes,  be 
seen  by  men  who  are  more  or  less  expert. 

Together  with  another  American  correspondent,  Mr.  Raymond  E. 
Swing,  Berlin  correspondent  of  the  Chicago  Daily  News,  I  had  succeeded 
in  getting  from  Enver  Pasha,  the  minister  of  war,  a  passport  that  amounted 
to  carte  blanche  at  any  of  the  Turkish  fronts.  The  two  of  us  had  witnessed 
the  Allied  operation  against  the  Dardanelles,  from  A  to  Z,  as  the  saying 
goes,  and  had  shown  by  our  conduct,  I  believe,  that  we  were  to  be  trusted. 
The  result  was  that  we  could  move  about  in  Turkey  very  much  as  we 
pleased,  provided  we  gave  notice  of  our  intentions. 

Captains  Williams  and  'Morton  had  suggested  several  times  that  I  use 
my  efforts  in  their  behalf  to  get  them  to  the  Dardanelles.  Already  it  was  in 
the  American  embassy  a  case  of  being  mistaken  for  pro-Turk  when  one 
did  not  heap  verbal  abuse  upon  a  country  and  government  whose  guest 
one  was.  Captains  'Morton  and  Williams  were  sure  that  my  standing  with 
the  Ottoman  government  was  better  than  that  of  the  ambassador.  Others 
thought  so,  too,  but  hinted  that  it  was  love  for  the  Turks  that  caused  this 
state  of  affairs.  Especially,  one  G.  Cornell  Tarler,  one  of  the  embassy 
secretaries,  was  sure  that  love  for  the  Turk  and  "maybe  something  else" 
was  responsible  for  the  good  standing  of  Mr.  Swing  and  myself  with  the 
Turks  and  Germans.  That  newspapermen  are  as  a  rule  very  cold-blooded 
in  such  matters — ^too  cynical  in  fact  to  give  much  for  the  sentiments  roused 
by  war,  was  not  clear  to  some  of  the  United  States  diplomatists  in  Constan- 
tinople, who  themselves  had  taken  sides,  quite  frankly  and  openly  at  that, 
in  spite  of  the  neutrality  proclamations  of  their  superior  chief. 

I  was  willing,  even  anxious,  to  help  the  two  captains,  feeling  that 
there  were  lessons  in  the  Dardanelles  coast  batteries  that  would  benefit 
the  United  States  coast  artillery  service  and  the  navy.     The  matter  was 


130  THE  CRAF^T  SINISTER 

brought  by  me  to  the  attention  of  Major  Kiamil  Bey,  personal  adjutant  of 
Enver  Pasha,  and  to  Major  Sefid  Bey,  in  charge  of  the  Second  Division 
of  the  Harbiyeh  Nasaret,  the  Ottoman  ministry  of  war  and  general  staff. 
Both  of  them  promised  to  do  what  they  could,  but  feared  that  this  would 
be  little  enough.  The  Turk  has  the  delightful  quality  of  being  frank  with 
persons  whom  he  has  no  reason  to  placate  with  empty  promises. 

Kiamil  and  Sefid  Beys  did  what  they  could,  and  it  amounted  to 
nothing.  Colonel  Bronsart  von  Schellendorf,  the  Ottoman  chief  of  staff, 
and  Major  Fischer,  a  German  officer  in  the  Ottoman  service,  who  was 
charged  with  such  matters,  had  expressed  themselves  against  the  trip  of 
Captains  Morton  and  Williams,  because,  as  they  put  it,  they  did  not  want 
to  establish  precedents.  Up  to  now,  in  fact,  no  other  foreigners,  not  in 
the  Ottoman  military  and  naval  service,  had  been  given  the  privileges  Mr. 
Swing  and  I  enjoyed.  From  another  source  which  I  need  not  divulge  I  had 
learned,  however,  that  Turk  and  German,  both,  were  afraid  to  let  the  two 
American  officers  go  to  the  front.  In  the  circles  that  ran  the  military 
machine  of  Turkey,  Americans  in  official  capacity  were  suspected  of  being 
so  much  in  sympathy  with  the  cause  of  the  Allies  that  they  would  transmit 
to  them  information  they  gathered. 

Mr.  Morgenthau,  meanwhile,  was  also  doing  his  best.  But  Enver 
Pasha,  whom  he  addressed  in  the  matter,  made  promises  which  he  hoped 
to  be  able  to  keep  some  day.  The  prospect  that  anything  would  come  of 
them  were  slim  enough,  and  since  Captains  Morton  and  Williams  thought 
the  thing  very  pressing,  they  asked  me  to  get  in  touch  with  the  Ottoman 
naval  staff.  That  organization,  however,  was  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the 
Germans;  its  chief  was  Admiral  Souchon,  who,  possibly,  because  he  was 
married  to  an  American  woman,  was  more  easily  approached  than  others. 
Unfortunately,  the  admiral  was  away  from  the  city  just  then.  The  man 
next  suitable  for  my  purposes  was  Corvette^Captain  Humann,  commander 
of  the  German  Naval  Base  on  the  Bosphorus,  and  naval  attache  of  the 
German  embassy.  He  would  do  his  best,  he  said.  That  best  was  a  letter, 
dated  April  18th,  in  which  he  said  that  he  had  taken  the  matter  up  with 
Captain  von  Jansen,  Souchon's  chief  of  staff,  but  that  the  prospects  were 
not  promising.* 

That  reply  seemed  final  enough  to  me.  Captains  Williams  and  Morton 
were  not  to  get  to  the  Dardanelles. 

For  some  weeks  the  matter  rested,  and  then,  at  a  dinner  given  in  the 
quarters  of  one  of  the  officers,  it  was  decided  to  take  it  up  aeain.  I  am 
afraid  that  the  two  officers  feared  that  I  was  not  promoting  their  cause  as 
well  as  they  thought  I  could.  On  the  following  day,  the  ambassador  asked 
me  into  his  office. 

•  See   footnote   on   opposite   page. 


DIPLOMATIC  OMNIPOTENCE  AT  CLOSE  RANGE      131 

He  said  that  the  two  captains  had  importuned  him  until  life  was  a 
misery — as  well  they  might  since  they  considered  their  professional  reputa- 
tion at  stake,  in  addition  to  being  unable  to  make  a  thorough  study  of  the 
effect  of  modern  high-explosives  upon  coast  artillery  works.  Everything 
possible  had  been  done  by  him  to  get  them  to  the  scene  of  action.  But 
there  was  no  end  of  promises  and  no  performance.  Enver  Pasha  had 
told  him  time  and  again  that  the  two  officers  would  be  given  the  opportunity 
they  sought,  but  it  seemed  that  the  Germans  "up  on  the  hill" — a  reference 
to  the  German  embassy  on  the  Boulevard  Ayas  Pasha — were  against  the 
trip.  It  seemed,  also,  that  one  element  was  putting  the  blame  on  the  other, 
since  German  officers  in  high  command  had  made  the  Turks  responsible. 
He  wanted  me  to  remove  the  obstacles. 

I  told  the  ambassador  that  he  was  mistaken.  Whatever  influence  I 
had  was  being  exerted,  and  so  far  my  efforts  had  led  to  nothing.  It  also 
was  brought  to  the  ambassador's  attention  that  there  was  no  reason  to 
believe  that  I  could  do  what  he  could  not  do.  But  Mr.  Morgenthau  was  of 
a  different  mind. 

Having  been  given  carte  blanche  in  this  manner,  I  set  again  about  to 
make  the  trip  possible.  This  time  I  took  the  matter  up  with  Enver  Pasha 
himself,  and  also  interested  the  German  ambassador  in  the  project.  Within 
two  weeks  I  had  the  promise  of  the  two  that  the  American  officers  would 
be  taken  to  the  front.    Some  time  was  lost,  however,  in  breaking  down  the 


*  I  append  a  part  of  a  report  made  to  the  Congress  of  the  United  States. 

"Copy  of  a  letter  (original  in  existence)  writ-  "Trntitlnn^ti 

ten   by    Corvette-Captain    Humann,    commander  ..^        "^.°,    "'            xt       ,  t>        tt     ^ 

of  the  Imperial  German  naval  base  at  Constan-  Imperial  German  Naval  Base  Headquarters, 

tinople,  to  the  verbal  request  made  to  him  that  "B  No 

Seid"%o''vgi.  7h""lrT„.rat^ihrD^r°jrn«  "Consuntinopl..  April  18.h.  15. 

and  on  Gallipoli.  "My  dear  Mr.   Schreiner: 

"According     to     information     coming     from 

'•  'v-^:^ i;_t.  r*  .-t    t.     ■»«•     •  Herrn   von   Janson,    there   is   little   prospect   of 

"  'Etinnen  KrSfm/n^n  ^""*  success  for  an  application  by  Captain  Williams 

"  'B  No      ?^      .            . ...  ^^'^  ^^  inspection  of  the  Dardanelles. 

"The  violation  of  the  principle  is  feared,  as 

"  'C'pel,   18.  4.   IS.  is  especially  the  precedent  which  would  create 

"•Sehr  geehrter  Herr  Schreiner!  inevitable  consequence. 

„                          A     1       r.  J       TT                    T  "With    best   greetings, 

Nach  einer  Auskunft  des  Herrn  von  Jan-  "Vmirc 

son   scheint   mir   ein   Gesuch   des   Captain   Wil-  xours, 

Hams  fuer   eine   Besichtigung  der   Dardanellcn  (Signed)    "Humakk. 

nicht  aussichtsreich.  ..jj^^^  ^^„   j^„^„   ^iU   j„f^^„   y^„  ^5^^^^,^ 

" 'Man  befuerchtet  den  Durchbruch  des  Prin-  concerning   travel   opportunities   to   the   Darda- 

zips    und    besonders    den    Praezedenzfall    der  nellcs. 

unumgaengliche    Konsequenzen    schaffti  ^.        ,         ~ — 

"Note. — The  above  letter  was  written  at  the 

Mit    ergebenstem    Gruss!  very  beginning  of  the  negotiations.     Other  cor- 

"  'ihr  respondence    relative   to    the    case   of    Captains 

r'«;,Vrl«^^    "  «TTrT«AM»T  '  Williams  and  Morton  is  still  among  my  effects 

(.Mgneci;         MUMANN.  jj^   Switzerland,   which,    owing  to   the   habit   of 

"  'Herr  von  Janson  wird  Ihnen  wegen  Fahrge-  the    French   authorities,    seizing   the    papers   of 

legenheit  nach  den  Dardanellen  direckt  Nach-  travellers,  I  did  not  attempt  to  take  out  with 

richt  geben.' "  me.                                                                  GAS." 


132  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

resistance  of  the  Turkish  and  Cerman  officers  who  in  the  past  had  opposed 
the  trip  of  inspection,  but  Captains  Morton  and  Williams  were  finally 
invited  to  make  the  trip,  and  had  the  experience  of  seeing  the  first  Ameri- 
can-made shells  used  on  Gallipoli  break  about  them. 

I  have  pfone  into  the  details  of  this  case  for  a  special  reason.  It  has 
been  intimated  already  that  the  authorities  in  Constantinople  were  sus- 
picious of  the  American  embassy.  The  case,  indeed,  was  much  worse.  In 
the  cafes  of  Pera  and  Stamboul  it  was  openly  discussed  that  the  American 
embassy  was  a  sort  of  headquarters  for  the  spies  of  the  Entente  govern- 
ments, who,  by  the  way,  numbered  hundreds.  The  U.  S.  stationaire 
"Scorpion"  was  linked  with  the  exploits  of  the  British  submarines  in  the 
Sea  of  Marmora,  and  when,  one  fine  summer's  afternoon,  a  British  sub- 
marine penetrated  into  the  Bosphorus,  and  nonchalantly  blew  up  a  coal 
barge  at  a  quay  in  Haidar- Pasha,  under  the  very  windows  of  the  Ottoman 
government  offices  in  Stamboul,  the  Turkish  populace  swore  that  the 
Americans  were  responsible  for  it,  while  the  Greeks  and  Armenians, 
waiting  for  a  deliverer,  saw  in  the  sinking  of  the  coal  barge  a  sign  that 
the  United  States  had  made  an  alliance  with  the  Triple  Entente. 

The  Foibles  of  a  Diplomatic  Agent 

Public  opinion  in  times  of  war  is  the  most  unreliable  thing  there  is. 
The  indignation  of  the  Turks  and  the  wishes  of  the  non-Turks  had  to  be 
met  by  the  Ottoman  government.  They  were  met  by  ordering  the 
"Scorpion"  to  take  station  inside  the  Golden  Horn,  between  the  new  and 
the  old  bridges.  To  Mr.  Morgenthau's  protest  the  Ottoman  government 
replied  that  it  would  be  safer  to  have  the  stationaire  at  her  new  moorings, 
since  a  British  submarine  might  mistake  her  for  a  Turkish  vessel  and  sink 
her.  The  circumstance  that  this  step  was  accompanied  by  a  close  search  for 
wireless  apparatus  at  Robert  College,  the  American  School  for  Girls  at 
Arnautkoi,  and  in  some  of  the  houses  inhabited  by  Americans,  serves  as  an 
indication  that  the  Ottoman  government  was  itself  not  entirely  satisfied 
with  the  appearance  of  things. 

In  March,  1915,  the  staff  of  the  American  embassy  received  re-in- 
forcement  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Lewis  Einstein,  who  had  formerly  been  a 
secretary  at  the  same  post,  had  left  it  as  persona  non  grata,  and  had  since 
then  filled  a  .small  position  as  chef  de  mission  in  Latin  America.  Mr. 
Einstein  was  not  wanted  at  the  American  embassy  in  Pera.  At  the  time 
of  his  arrival  I  was  at  the  Dardanelles,  but  even  in  that  shell-raked  region 
the  name  of  the  new  diplomatic  agent  was  mentioned.  It  seems  that  the 
Turkish  government  persisted  in  looking  upon  Mr.  Einstein  as  entirely  a 
plain  citizen  and  refused  to  extend  diplomatic  privileges  to  him.     Since 


THE  FOIBLES  OF  A  DIPLOMATIC  AGENT  133 

more  help  was  needed  at  the  American  embassy,  owing  to  the  increase  in 
work  occasioned  by  the  taking-over  of  the  interests  of  belligerent  govern- 
ments, it  was  not  easy  to  understand  why  Mr.  Einstein  should  be  given 
such  treatment. 

Upon  my  return  to  the  city  I  learned  that  the  diplomatic  agent  was 
even  persona  non  grata  with  the  embassy  staff.  He  had  been  relegated  into 
a  little  cubby-hole  of  an  office  on  the  second  floor  of  the  embassy  chancery 
and  his  principal  occupation  seemed  to  consist  of  doing  nothing  in  par- 
ticular. The  ambassador  himself  was  highly  displeased  with  this  sort  of 
assistance,  and  indiscreet  persons  about  the  embassy  let  it  be  understood 
that  Mr.  Einstein  had  been  sent  to  Constantinople  at  the  request  of  M. 
Jusserand,  the  French  ambassador  at  Washington.  Since  Mr.  Einstein, 
before  his  transfer  to  the  Turkish  capital,  had  been  stationed  at  London 
and  Paris,  that  rumor  had  more  color  than  was  well. 

I  may  say  that  many  of  my  despatches  from  the  Dardanelles  were 
relayed  through  the  American  embassy,  though  I  had  an  assistant  in  Con- 
stantinople with  an  address  of  his  own,  the  Petit  Club,  next  door  to  the 
embassy.  Since  Mr.  Damon  Theron  could  get  the  dispatches  at  one  place 
as  easily  as  at  the  other,  and  since  Mr.  Morgenthau  was  keenly  interested 
in  what  was  going  on  at  the  front,  I  addressed  my  dispatches  to  his 
embassy.  In  that  manner  he  and  his  secretaries  and  attaches  were  kept 
informed  almost  up  to  the  minute. 

My  dispatches  contained  all  the  general  public  could  be  interested  in. 
Originally  they  contained  more  than  what  the  Turkish  and  German  officer- 
censors  at  Dardanelles  thought  necessary,  and  from  their  own  angle,  wise. 
Since  the  newspaper  correspondent  writing  war  copy  can  not  afford  to 
violate  confidence,  should  not  do  it,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  if  he  wishes  to 
retain  his  usefulness,  let  alone  his  good  name,  the  dispatches  which  the 
embassy  members  had  read  marked  the  limit  to  which  I  could  carry  dis- 
cussion.    Several  members  of  the  embassy  staff  did  not  think  so. 

Shortly  after  my  return  from  the  Dardanelles  front  I  was  invited  to 
have  tea  with  the  ambassador  and  his  staff — a  "stag  affair,"  which  took 
place  almost  every  day  and  to  which  usually  only  the  secretaries  and  the 
chief  clerks  were  invited.  On  this  day  were  present :  Mr.  Morgenthau,  Mr. 
Einstein,  Mr.  Shamavonian,  first  dragoman,  Mr.  Antonian,  the  ambas- 
sador's private  secretary,  and  one  of  the  diplomatic  secretaries. 

There  was  no  reason  why  for  their  entertainment  I  should  not  recount 
the  general  features  of  the  great  bombardment  in  a  more  intimate  manner 
that  newspaper  writing  permits.  But  I  noticed  that  after  a  while  I  was 
being  cross-examined,  with  Mr.  Einstein  in  control  of  the  process.  What 
he  wanted  to  know  especially  was  what  amount  of  ammunition  there  was 
left  in  the  Turkish  emplacements.    In  military  information  that  is  a  major 


134  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

subject,  of  course,  and  quite  the  last  thing  which  a  war  correspondent 
should  discuss.  Needless  to  say  I  avoided  that  question.  When  a  diplomatic 
agent  shows  too  great  an  interest  in  so  vital  an  aspect  of  a  military  situa- 
tion it  is  usually  best  to  be  on  guard. 

Several  efforts  to  bring  Mr.  Einstein  off  the  subject  failed.  I  pleaded 
ignorance.  That  also  was  futile.  The  diplomatic  agent  thought  that  as 
a  former  officer  of  artillery  the  detail  of  ammunition  could  not  escape 
my  attention.  In  that  he  was  right,  of  course.  It  did  so  happen  that  I  knew 
the  exact  number  of  shells,  of  the  armor-piercing  variety,  which  were  left 
in  the  main  batteries  of  Anadolu  Hamidieh  and  in  the  Kilid-il-Bahr  works. 
I  also  surmised  that  the  agents  of  the  Entente  government  would  pay  any 
sum  for  the  information,  and  think  the  bargain  a  good  one.  The  blue-heads 
left  could  not  keep  the  Allied  fleet  from  forcing  the  strait — ^the  Dardanelles 
in  fact  were  open,  as  the  Allied  commander  could  have  easily  ascertained 
by  returning  to  the  attack  on  March  19th,  or  for  weeks  thereafter.  With 
a  little  more  initiative  than  was  shown,  the  British  and  French  fleets  would 
have  been  in  Constantinople  long  before  I  could  be  there,  as  I  have  fully 
explained  in  my  book  "From  Berlin  to  Bagdad.'* 

There  is  no  doubt  that  I  had  in  my  hands  a  goodly  share  of  the  fate 
of  nations,  but  it  was  no  business  of  mine  to  give  the  rudder  of  the  war  and 
fate  so  violent  a  jerk.  Had  the  Allies  known  that  the  Turkish  batteries 
along  the  Dardanelles  were  virtually  out  of  ammunition  of  the  armor-pierc^ 
ing  kind,  had  they  known  that  the  further  resistance  of  the  Turks  could 
at  best  be  but  a  matter  of  minutes,  not  even  hours,  that  Admiral  von 
Usedom  Pasha,  Mertens  Pasha  and  the  Turkish  officers  were  sure  that 
a  following-up  of  the  bombardment  of  March  18th  would  result  in  crushr 
ing  defeat  for  them  and  a  retreat  into  Anatolia,  much  of  the  history  of  the 
Great  War  might  be  different.  What  the  Allied  governments  did  learn  was 
that  on  March  19th  the  Ottoman  government  was  ready  to  go  to  Eski- 
Shehir,  but  that  did  not  seem  to  be  enough. 

Mr.  Einstein  must  have  surmised  that  I  knew  more  than  I  was  willing: 
to  admit.  I  am  afraid  that  I  was  not  enough  of  a  simulator  to  deceive  him. 
He  began  to  press  the  point  anew,  and  this  time  stated  that  as  a  citizen 
of  the  United  States  it  was  my  duty  to  give  the  diplomatic  service  whatever 
information  I  had.  Mr.  Morgenthau  was  inclined  to  support  that  view, 
and  Mr.  Shamavonian  also  chimed  in.  The  incident  closed  by  my  telling 
Mr.  Einstein  and  the  company  gently  but  firmly  that  I  did  not  take  this 
view  of  the  situation,  and  that  the  journalistic  profession  had  rules  of  its 
own — one  of  them  being  not  to  exchange  confidences  with  a  service,  the 
diplomatic,  for  instance,  which  normally  made  it  its  great  principle  not 
to  give  more  information  to  press  and  public  than  was  deemed  wise  or 
purposeful. 


THE  FOIBLES  OF  A  DIPLOMATIC  AGENT  135 

My  actual  motive  in  not  telling  Mr.  Einstein  what  ammunition  the 
Turks  had  left  was  my  desire  to  treat  them  as  they  had  treated  me. 
There  was  no  reason  why  the  Turkish  and  German  officers  in  the  Ottoman 
service  should  allow  me  to  practically  live  in  their  emplacements — a  most 
incautious  violation  of  every  rule  of  military  security.  Still  they  had  done 
that,  because  I  was  personally  liked  by  them  and  had,  in  return  for  the 
privilege  of  being  permitted  at  the  fronts,  placed  myself  under  Ottoman 
military  law,  with  the  especial  understanding  that  in  case  of  trouble  I 
would  not  appeal  to  the  American  embassy  for  help.  But  conduct  of  that 
sort  is  not  so  easily  understood  by  the  members  of  a  profession  that  will 
violate  every  rule  of  good  ethics  when  it  can  do  that  with  impunity. 

Though  I  had  given  Mr.  Einstein  to  understand  that  on  questions  of 
vital  importance  to  the  Turks  I  could  not  be  interviewed,  he  tried  again 
later  on  to  get  the  information  he  seemed  to  want  so  badly.  For  Captains 
Morton  and  Williams,  who  had  at  least  some  reason  to  be  interested  in  this 
aspect  of  affairs  at  the  Dardanelles,  I  must  say  that  neither  of  them  even 
hinted  at  the  subject  of  ammunition. 

Beyond  the  Bounds  of  Diplomatic  Propriety 

It  was  the  conduct  of  Mr.  Einstein  that  brought  the  American 
embassy  in  Pera  into  disrepute.  Constantinople  was  the  locale  of  an  ex- 
tended espionage  of  the  Allied  governments.  One  of  their  agents  was  a 
man  who  had  come  to  Turkey  with  an  American  passport,  issued  him  in 
London  under  false  pretenses  or  with  the  connivance  of  some  embassy 
official,  when  he  was  in  reality  a  British  subject  and  had  already  served 
in  the  British  army  in  France.  The  man  had  in  addition  credentials  from 
Mr.  Bell,  of  the  Chicago  Daily  News,  a  paper  which  was  represented  at 
that  very  moment  by  an  able  man  I  have  mentioned,  Mr.  Swing,  who  did 
not  know  that  representation  of  his  paper  in  Constantinople  had  been 
duplicated  in  so  imprudent  a  manner.  I  did  not  wish  to  see  the  young  man 
strangulated  on  a  tripod,  on  the  Seraskerkapu,  and  let  him  know  that  the 
last  boat  for  Rumania  was  to  leave  early  the  following  morning.  The 
secret  service  of  the  Turks  had  been  watching  him  closely,  and  Mr.  Morgen- 
thau  had  confirmed  what  I  had  suspected  by  asking  me  to  tell  the  man  that 
a  renewal  of  his  passport  had  been  refused  by  the  Department  of  State 
on  the  ground  that  he  was  not  an  American  citizen. 

I  may  say  that  the  agent  first  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Ottoman 
authorities  by  coming  to  Constantinople  with  credentials  for  a  paper  that 
was  well  represented  in  Turkey.  Mr.  Swing  was  questioned  in  regard  to 
the  man  before  he  had  met  him,  and  had  stated  that  probably  it  was  some 
other  Chicago  paper,  which  the  agent,  who  was  not  a  newspaper  man,  of 


136  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

course,  had  come  to  represent.  He  had  no  reason  to  believe  that  the 
"correspondent"  had  been  appointed  by  the  Chicago  Daily  News,  as  his 
card  actually  said,  nor  did  he  believe  it  until  he  saw  the  letter  from  Mr. 
Bell.  There  was  nothing  to  do  after  that  but  accept  the  man  as  bona  Ude, 
at  least  publicly.  The  authorities,  however,  were  not  satisfied  with  these 
features  of  the  case,  and  in  the  end  Mr.  Swing  himself  was  doubted,  so 
much  so  that  he  had  to  apply  for  a  sort  of  safe  conduct  before  he  could 
return  to  his  regular  post  in  Berlin. 

The  standing  of  the  Americans  in  Constantinople  was  further  injured 
by  the  conduct  of  a  man  known  as  Captain  Stanley  Fortesque,  an  Ameri- 
can journalist.  The  man  had  been  taken  to  the  Dardanelles  on  one  of  the 
personally-conducted  trips  the  war  department  organized  for  itinerant 
newspaper  men  not  regularly  stationed  in  Turkey.  Such  a  trip  consisted 
of  a  run  down  to  the  Dardanelles  aboard  a  torpedoboat  or  destroyer  and 
a  view  of  the  Turkish  emplacements  from  the  outside,  to  which  later  a 
short  trip  to  the  fronts  at  Ariburnu  and  Sid-il-Bahr  was  added.  As  the 
result  of  this  the  man  in  question  had  written  for  the  Paris  periodical 
V Illustration  an  article  going  into  the  min  ite  details  of  what  was  purported 
to  be  the  condition  along  the  Dardanelles.  The  article  was  accompanied  by 
drawings,  more  or  less  inaccurate,  but  dangerous  enough  to  the  Turks  to 
necessitate  a  change  in  some  of  the  emplacements.  Needless  to  say,  the 
Turks  were  not  pleased  with  that  sort  of  conduct  on  the  part  of  a  man 
who  had  been  a  member  of  the  United  Si  ates  army. 

The  incident  had  the  eflfect  that  thereafter  no  foreign  correspondents 
of  the  itinerant  type  were  permitted  to  ijo  to  any  of  the  Turkish  fronts. 
In  this  connection  I  may  say  that  the  Tu/ks  were  unusually  liberal  in  that 
respect  at  the  outbreak  of  the  War. 

To  sum  up  this  situation  I  wish  to  record  that  already  the  relations 
between  the  Turkish  government  and  the  American  embassy  were  the 
poorest.  They  were  so  poor  in  fact  that  on  the  occasion  of  an  audience  given 
Mr.  Swing  and  myself  by  Sultan  Mohammed  Rechid  Khan  V,  the  sovereign 
did  not  even  think  it  worth  while  to  express  the  usual  formula  according  to 
which  the  relations  between  two  countries  are  supposed  to  be  the  best. 
Though  the  audience  was  long  enough  to  have  included  that  little  detail,  the 
sultan  did  not  refer  to  it.  The  callers  could  not  remind  him  of  it,  of  course, 
nor  did  Salih  Pasha,  the  Sultan's  aide  de  camp,  who  acted  as  interpreter, 
think  of  this  little  matter.  When  later  we  came  to  it,  Mr.  Swing  and  I 
concluded  that  no  great  harm  would  be  done  by  supplying  this  little 
formality  ourselves.  In  this  connection  I  must  state  that  Mr.  Morgenthau 
had  been  unable  to  secure  the  audience  for  us,  and  that  we  made  use  of  our 
private  connections  in  Turkish  and  German  official  circles. 


VUI 

MACHIAVELISM  A  OUTRANGE 

THE  Dardanelles-Gallipoli  fiasco  is  still  puzzling  the  minds  of  the  few 
vho  care  to  go  into  subjects  of  that  sort  with  reason  and  logic  as  their 
equipment.  The  peculiar  aspects  of  the  operations  of  the  naval  forces 
and  expeditionary  armies  of  the  Allied  governments  were  to  a  certain  extent 
dealt  with  by  the  British  Dardanelles  Commission,  which  investigated  the 
obvious  phases  of  this  piece  of  military  Quixotism,  but  nothing  substantial 
— that  is,  truthful — ever  came  of  this.  In  the  reports  of  this  commission 
it  has  been  admitted  that  mistakes  were  made,  and  after  that  nothing  was 
heard  again  of  Sir  Ian  Hamilton,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  landing  and 
operations  on  Gallipoli. 

Though  the  military  features  of  this  adventure  are  somewhat  stale 
just  now,  I  must  give  enough  of  them  to  prepare  the  reader  for  the  politics 
behind  them,  promising  to  be  brief  in  my  outline. 

The  first  attack  by  the  Allied  fleet  on  the  Turkish  works  at  Kum  Kale 
and  Sid-il-Bahr  was  made  on  November  3,  1914,  the  bombardment  having 
in  the  main  the  character  of  a  demonstration —  notice  to  theTurks  that  the 
War  was  on.  On  December  13th  an  Allied  submarine  penetrated  the 
Dardanelles  as  far  as  the  Dardanos  emplacement  and  there  torpedoed  the 
converted  hull  of  the  Turkish  former  battleship  "Messudieh,"  moored  on 
the  shallows  of  Sari  Siglar  Bay  and  serving  as  a  signal  station.  Two  days 
later  the  Turkish  gunners  sank  nearby  the  French  submarine  that  may 
have  done  this,  and  on  January  15th,  1915,  the  French  submarine 
"Sapphire"  sank  in  the  same  locality  by  striking  a  mine. 

On  February  20th  the  Allied  fleet  began  a  severe  attack  on  the  batteries 
of  Kum  Kale  and  Sid-il-Bahr,  which  guarded  the  entrance,  and  after  a 
seven-days  bombardment,  in  which  the  Turks  were  sorely  handicapped  by 
the  lesser  range  of  their  guns,  the  works  in  question  were  silenced  and  in 
part  razed  to  the  ground.  For  another  two  days  the  sites  of  the  coast 
batteries  were  subjected  to  bombardments  and  then  the  Turkish  emplace- 
ments along  Erenkoi  Bay  were  taken  under  fire,  especially  the  five-piece 
battery  on  the  site  of  the  ancient  city  of  Dardanos.  Little  by  little  the 
zone  of  the  bombardment  was  extended,  and  on  March  5th  the  works  at 
Killid-il-Bahr  were  seriously  hammered  for  the  first  time.  On  the  following 
day  the  piece  de  resistance  of  the  defense  scheme  of  the  Outer  Dardanelles, 

137 


138  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Fort  Anadolu  Hamidieh,  was  placed  under  fire  by  the  Allied  fleet,  and 
on  the  following  day  this  was  continued.  After  that  a  period  of  rest  set  in, 
due  in  the  main  to  the  paucity  of  effect  favorable  to  the  Allies. 

The  Turks  had  placed  howitzers  on  the  elevations  of  Gallipoli  and  the 
eastern  shore  of  the  strait  and  these  were  making  themselves  much  more 
felt  than  the  German  artillery  experts,  who  had  advised  that  course,  had 
themselves  expected.  While  the  shell  of  the  howitzer  is  absolutely  impotent 
against  the  side  of  an  armored  warcraft,  it  can,  nevertheless,  penetrate 
the  decks  of  such  ships,  when  these  are  unarmored.  The  Allied  fleet  had 
been  much  molested  by  this,  and  their  conduct  indicated  that  re-inforce- 
ments  would  be  called  to  take  care  of  this  situation. 

Caliber  for  caliber  the  guns  in  the  Turkish  emplacements  were  much 
inferior  to  those  of  the  British  and  French  battleships.  They  were  wholly 
impotent  in  comparison  to  the  large  rifles  of  the  "Queen  Elizabeth,"  a 
member  of  what  was  then  the  most  modern  type  of  superdreadnaught 
battle-cruisers.  The  difference  in  range  between  gun  ashore  and  gun  afloat 
was  even  in  case  of  the  older  pre-dreadnaught  types  employed  by  the 
Allies  great  enough  to  permit  the  total  reduction  of  the  coast  batteries 
without  the  ships  having  to  come  within  what  was  at  all  an  effective  range 
of  the  Turkish  guns. 

In  the  bombardment  and  reduction  of  the  works  at  the  entrance  to 
the  strait  that  had  been  the  deciding  factor.  The  Allied  fleet  had  destroyed 
those  batteries  without  suffering  material  losses  of  any  kind.  Within  the 
Dardanelles,  in  the  Bay  of  Erenkoi,  it  was  different,  however.  Outside  the 
Allied  battleships  had  stayed  well  out  of  effective  range  of  the  Turkish 
guns.  In  Erenkoi  Bay  that  was  not  possible,  since  a  ring  of  emplacements, 
all  of  them  more  or  less  antiquated,  surrounded  them  there.  In  addition  there 
were  the  howitzers  of  the  Turks.  A  shell  piercing  the  deck  may  easily  ruin 
the  machinery  of  a  ship,  may  even  sink  it,  provided  conditions  are  favorable. 

A  Militaro-Diplomatic  Move  Foiled 

It  was  plain,  then,  to  the  commander  of  the  Allied  fleet,  that  he  would 
have  to  augment  his  forces  sufficiently  to  take  the  major  part  of  the  coast 
batteries  along  the  Outer  Dardanelles  under  fire  simultaneously.  He  had 
this  fleet  at  Tenedos  and  Lemnos  on  March  16th.  Two  days  later  he  came 
to  the  attack  with  a  force  of  eighteen  battleships  of  the  line  and  the 
"Queen  Elizabeth." 

So  far  the  Turkish  gunners  and  their  German  associates  had  been 
accustomed  to  dealing  with  from  three  to  seven  bombarding  battleships. 
The  greater  array  left  them  somewhat  diffused  in  mind  and  fire  practice. 
So  many  targets  were  offered  and  so  few  of  them  could  be  reached  that 


A  MIUTARO-DIPLOMATIC  MOVE  FOILED  139 

a  most  uncomfortable  feeling  crept  over  everybody,  as  I  have  reason  to 
know,  seeing  that  I  weathered  the  opening  salvoes  in  a  Turkish  emplace- 
ment, Fort  Tchemenlik.  Knowing  that  a  live  war  correspondent  is  better 
than  a  dead  one,  I  ultimately  found  better  cover,  a  polite  way  for  saying 
that  there  was  an  unceremonious  retreat,  with  little  glory  attaching  thereto. 
The  fire  of  the  Allied  ships  was  an  overwhelming  one.  But  the  great 
range  of  it  made  most  of  the  shells  rather  ineffective  for  lack  of  good  aim, 
to  which  must  be  added  that  the  old  earthworks  of  the  Turks  withstood  the 
impact  of  the  huge  projectiles  much  better  than  a  modern  concrete-armor 
contraption  of  the  Antwerp  type  would  have  done.  Aerial  observers  had 
established  that  much  by  about  1  p.  m.  and  the  result  was  that  the  Allied 
ships,  milling  about  the  bay,  ventured  in  closer,  despite  the  mine  field  that 
was  believed  to  be  more  formidable  than  in  reality  it  was. 

At  2  p.  m.  the  French  battleship  "Bouvet,"  was  sunk  by  the  Turkish 
and  German  gunners  in  Fort  Anadolu  Hamidieh,  and  two  hours  later,  the 
Allied  armada  had  seven  disabled  ships  on  their  hands.  About  sundown 
one  of  these,  the  "Irresistible,"  was  sliced  to  pieces  by  the  guns  of  the 
Turks,  and  a  little  later,  a  third  member  of  the  fleet,  the  "Ocean"  sank  in 
Morto  Bay,  a  little  bight  on  the  Gallipolian  shore,  where  British  cruisers 
intended  beaching  the  injured  vessel.  The  "Queen  Elizabeth"  had  suffered 
heavily  from  the  shells  of  the  howitzers  and  had  also  withdrawn. 

All  of  this  took  more  ammunition  than  the  Turks  had  to  give  to  the 
affairs  of  a  single  day,  and  when  night  came  the  prospect  was  that  a 
return  of  the  British  and  French  en  force  on  the  morrow  would  certainly 
"force"  the  Dardanelles. 

There  was  no  return  engagement,  however,  contrary  to  the  fulsome 
newspaper  reports  of  those  days.  The  Allied  fleet  failed  to  appear,  and 
after  sticking  close  to  the  islands  of  Tenedos  and  Lemnos  for  a  few 
days,  most  of  the  ships  went  to  other  parts  for  repairs  and  refitting.  The 
supreme  commander  of  the  armada  could  not  know  that  the  Turks  were 
practically  out  of  ammunition,  and,  in  addition  to  that,  he  was  obliged  to 
count  on  the  defense  of  the  Turkish  batteries  along  the  Inner  Dardanelles 
as  well  as  on  the  efforts  of  the  works  he  had  bombarded  during  a  day 
that  cost  him  three  battleships,  several  minor  craft,  and  necessitated  much 
repair  work.  Nor  had  he  learned  that  the  Germans,  theorizing  that  with 
the  defense  of  the  Outer  Strait  the  fate  of  the  Inner  Dardanelles  would 
be  decided,  had  totally  changed  the  system  of  batteries,  as  the  British 
Naval  Mission  to  Turkey  knew  it.  Admiral  Limpus,  the  chief  of  that 
mission,  was  indeed  with  the  Allied  fleet,  and  his  advice  under  different 
conditions  would  have  been  invaluable.  But  the  Germans  and  Turks  had 
discounted  that  in  the  regroupment  that  was  undertaken  within  the  limits 
set  by  time  and  equipment. 


140  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

The  Allied  fleet  resumed  the  bombardment  of  the  batteries  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  landing  of  the  first  expeditionary  forces  on  April  25th,  but 
remembered  too  well  the  lesson  it  had  been  given  on  March  18th  to  venture 
in  very  close.  Moreover,  a  different  plan  of  action  had  been  decided 
upon  meanwhile  in  London. 

The  troops  landed  on  Gallipoli  on  April  25th  and  for  the  three  days 
following  were  supposed  to  place  themselves  in  possession  of  certain 
elevations  on  the  peninsula  from  which  the  Turkish  coast  batteries  along 
the  Outer  and  Inner  Dardanelles  could  be  bombarded  to  greater  advantage, 
and  silenced,  so  that  the  Allied  fleet,  in  which  the  British  units  predominated, 
could  steam  to  Constantinople.  The  two  principal  elevations  were  the 
Atchi-Baba,  a  little  distance  north  of  the  points  in  and  near  Sid-il-Bahr, 
where  British  troops  were  landed,  and  the  Kodjatchemen  Dagh,  immediately 
in  the  rear  of  Ariburnu,  where  the  **Anzac"  troops  were  set  ashore. 

The  landing  of  French  contingents  near  Kum  Kale,  on  the  Anatolian 
shore,  and  a  feint  on  the  Thracian  shore  by  Greek  volunteers,  in  the  Gulf 
of  Xeros,  were  measures  designed  to  deceive  Field  Marshall  Liman  von 
Sanders  Pasha,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  defense  of  the  peninsula. 

To  some  extent  Liman  Pasha  was  deceived.  While  he  had  not  left 
entirely  undefended  the  shore  at  Sid-il-Bahr,  and  Ariburnu,  he  had,  never- 
theless, stationed  the  gross  of  his  scant  force,  and  his  puny  reserves,  in  a 
manner  agreeable  to  tactical  and  strategic  practices  that  harmonized  with 
what  the  military  world  in  general  had  expected.  Some  of  Liman's  spare 
troops  were  concentrated  to  the  west  of  Maidos,  but  more  of  them  were 
up  at  Bulair,  about  65  miles  north  of  Sid-il-Bahr,  with  no  railroad  to  serve 
them.  The  Turkish  commander  had  expected,  of  course,  that  Sir  Ian 
Hamilton  would  make  his  major  attack  on  the  narrow  isthmus  which 
connects  the  peninsula  with  Thrace,  and  which  for  such  contingencies  had 
been  fortified  by  the  Turks  across  its  entire  width,  about  S^/^  miles,  with 
the  defense  face  north,  instead  of  south,  as  is  so  generally  believed, 
even  by  military  men.  The  purpose  of  the  forts  and  redoubts,  and  their 
intervening  infantry  positions,  was  not  to  hold  back  an  enemy  in  possession 
of  the  peninsula  from  advancing  into  Thrace  and  on  the  capital,  but  to 
protect  the  coast  batteries  along  the  Dardanelles  against  attack  from  the 
rear. 

Liman  von  Sanders  Pasha  realized  fully  that  the  successful  occupa- 
tion by  Allied  troops  of  almost  any  point  along  the  shores  of  the  Gulf  of 
Xeros  might  develop  into  a  far  greater  problem  for  him,  and  for 
Turkey,  than  the  eiTective  landing  at  Sid-il-Bahr  and  Ariburnu.  It  meant 
at  the  very  least  a  cutting-off  of  the  peninsula  by  land,  and  the  placing 
in  jeopardy  of  the  line  of  communication  with  Germany,  the  Constantinople- 
Sofia  railroad  line.    True  enough,  an  advance  of  the  Allies  on  the  Turkish 


A  MILITARO-DIPLOMATIC  MOVE  FOILED  141 

capital  would  have  brought  them  up  at  the  Tchataldja  line  of  fortifications, 
no  easy  nut  to  crack  for  an  expeditionary  force  that  depended  upon  a  long 
line  of  communication,  but  the  effect  of  cutting  the  rail  line  from  Berlin 
to  Constantinople  was  something  which  both,  the  Turkish  and  the  German 
general  staffs,  had  to  avoid.  Militarily  that  would  have  been  no  especial 
loss  just  then,  but  the  political  effect  would  have  been  tremendous. 

Before  entering  upon  a  disquisition  of  the  political  motives  behind 
Sir  Ian  Hamilton's  instructions,  I  will  complete  the  outline  of  the  Gallipoli 
operation. 

With  the  landing  accomplished,  the  Allies,  French  and  British  troops 
at  Sid-il-Bahr,  and  the  "Anzacs"  at  Ariburnu,  engaged  the  Turks  in  a 
series  of  most  murderous  offensives.  But  the  Atchi-Baba  hill,  and  the 
Kodjatchemen  Dagh,  remained  as  far  off  as  ever  in  August  of  that  year. 
On  the  6th  of  that  month  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  began  to  throw  his  second 
expeditionary  contingents  upon  the  peninsula,  especially  at  Suvla  Bay, 
and  for  another  few  months  the  wearying  position  warfare  on  Gallipoli 
continued. 

In  December  and  in  January,  1916,  the  Allied  forces  on  the  peninsula 
were  withdrawn,  and  thereafter  the  Dardanelles  and  its  environments 
ceased  to  be  a  theater  of  war.  Despite  the  fact  that  the  great  undertaking 
was  prevented  from  being  a  debacle,  as  Turk  and  German  hoped  to  make 
it.  Despite  the  fine  management  shown  in  the  retreat  from  the  peninsula, 
the  loss  of  prestige  to  the  arms  of  the  Allies  was  great. 

Such  a  loss  had  to  be  taken  into  consideration  before  the  order  for 
retirement  was  given,  and  had  the  political  situation  remained  what  it  was 
in  the  winter  of  1914-5  the  British  would  have  never  consented  to  the 
abandonment  of  a  plan  that  had  cost  them  so  many  lives  and  so  much 
money.  The  fact  is  that  the  danger  of  losing  Constantinople  and  her  water- 
ways to  the  Russians  had  subsided  sufficiently  to  permit  British  statesmen 
to  regard  the  war  with  Turkey  a  secondary  matter.  Russia  was  for  the 
time  being  too  busy  with  her  disintegrating  army,  and  with  the  bad  fortunes 
of  war,  to  threaten  seriously  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Dardanelles  and  the 
city  between  them.  On  the  other  hand,  the  entrance  into  the  War  of 
Bulgaria,  on  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers  group,  had  given  the  situation 
in  the  hinterland  of  Constantinople,  the  Balkans,  a  different  character. 

Strange  Diplomatic  Bed-Fellows 

The  decision  of  the  Ottoman  government  to  link  its  fate  with  that 
of  the  Central  Powers  had  led  to  an  awkward  political  situation  between 
the  members  of  the  Triple  Entente.  War  of  some  sort  would  have  to  be 
made  upon  a  government  which  in  the  past  had  subsisted  almost  entirely 


142  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

by  the  gmce  and  upon  the  good  will  of  the  Powers.  To  leave  matters 
with  a  declaration  of  war  was  highly  dangerous,  and  might  give  force  to 
the  fetwah  of  the  Sultan,  calling  for  a  Holy  War,  which  otherwise  it 
would  and  did  lack.  The  British  government,  especially,  had  to  fear  the 
consequences  of  ignoring  the  challenge  of  the  Turkish  government.  The 
millions  of  Mohammedans  under  British  rule  and  control  were  bound  to 
keep  a  very  close  watch  on  what  would  happen  in  this  fight  between  King 
George  of  Great  Britain,  Emperor  of  India,  etc.,  their  temporal  overlord, 
and  Sultan  Mohammed  Rechid  Khan  V  of  Turkey,  Ghazi,  Caliph,  etc., 
spiritual  head  of  Islam. 

The  other  side  of  this  medal  was  not  much  prettier.  The  logical  point 
of  attack  for  British  troops  was  not  in  the  southern  extremes  of 
Mesopotamia,  nor  was  Russia  entirely  satisfied  with  the  case  of  necessity 
pleaded  by  the  British  in  connection  with  the  Suez  Canal.  What  Russia 
wanted  forthwith  was  the  opening  of  the  Dardanelles,  so  that  her  ships 
might  take  wheat  to  Great  Britain  and  France,  and  materials  of  war  to 
the  Black  Sea  ports.  That  was  sound  enough,  but  for  the  British  very  poor 
policy.  What  Russia  wanted  more,  though,  was  to  set  foot  into  Constanti- 
nople, so  that  she  might  actually  have  and  hold  what  just  then  was  nothing 
more  than  the  substance  of  a  treaty. 

It  would  not  do,  just  then,  for  British  statesmen  to  follow  their  tradi- 
tional policy  of  being  the  friend  of  the  Turks,  for  the  sole  reason  of  keeping 
the  Russian  Black  Sea  fleet  bottled  up,  and  to  the  size  which  limitation 
of  radius  to  a  mare  clausum  imposes.  To  be  sure  at  that  moment  a  large 
Russian  fleet  would  have  been  very  desirable,  as  the  Russian  cruiser 
"Askold,"  attached  later  to  the  Dardanelles  fleet,  demonstrated  concretely. 
But  the  British  politician  in  office  is  generally  a  statesman  for  the  reason 
that  he  must  follow  a  traditional  policy — drops  into  it  as  a  matter  of  fact. 
The  British  empire  today  travels  on  the  impetus  and  in  the  groove  furnished 
by  her  great  political  leaders,  and  in  this  instance  the  momentum  and 
channel  were  the  exclusion  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  of  the  Russian  from 
the  Mediterranean. 

The  Russian  Black  Sea  war  fleet  was  small  because  it  was  limited  to 
a  relatively  small  sheet  of  water,  on  the  shores  of  which  live  weak  neighbors. 
It  had  for  military  purposes  no  access  to  the  high  seas.  There  was  no 
reason  why  the  Russian  Black  Sea  navy  should  have  been  larger  than  it 
was — indeed,  there  was  no  valid  reason  why  it  should  have  been  so  large. 
But  with  the  Dardanelles  in  the  hands  of  the  Russian,  things  would  have 
been  entirely  different. 

Possession  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora  would  have  given  Russia  the 
finest  naval  base  in  the  world,  and  thereafter  the  Russian  Baltic  naval 
ports  would  have  rapidly  become  a  thing  of  memory.    In  that  event,  also. 


STRANGE  DIPLOMATIC  BED-FELLOWS  143 

Great  Britain  would  have  had  for  rival  in  the  supremacy  of  the  seas  not 
a  Germany,  that  was  poverty-stricken,  in  comparison  with  the  reserve 
resources  of  Russia,  but  a  state  to  whose  population  control  of  the 
Dardanelles  would  have  been  the  signal  for  a  united  attempt  to  secure 
h^emony  of  much  of  the  earth.  A  Russia  that  had  Zarigrad  on  the 
Golden  Horn  for  its  real  capital,  would  have  needed  no  social  reforms 
of  a  violent  character.  In  the  widening  of  the  political  horizon  of  their 
country,  the  Russian  people  would  have  found  their  liberation,  while  the 
realization  of  a  dream  of  a  thousand  years  would  have  implanted  into  the 
Russian  the  thing  he  never  had — patriotism  of  the  imperialistic  brand. 

These  were  possibilities,  nay  actualities,  which  the  British  statesmen 
had  to  bear  in  mind.  These  men  were  indeed  before  the  horns  of  a 
dilemma.  On  the  one  hand  they  might  lose  their  Mohammedan  empire, 
and  on  the  other  the  Dardanelles,  a  waterway  controlling,  under  the  cir- 
ciunstances,  the  highway  to  that  empire — the  Suez  Canal. 

Russia's  Dream  a  Diplomatic  Desire 

Let  us  see  how  the  Russian  government  looked  upon  the  case. 

The  situation  being  what  it  was,  that  government  decided  to  take  off 
for  always  the  irksome  barriers  across  the  entrance  and  mouth  of  the 
Bosphorus-Dardanelles  channel.  Sazonoff  wanted  much  besides.  When  the 
British  government  saw  his  program  it  regretted  for  the  first  time  that 
it  had  entered  the  European  War  "for  the  sake  of  Belgium."  In  London 
they  actually  gasped  for  breath. 

Sir  Louis  Mallet  had  been  given  no  great  welcome  when  he  returned 
to  his  capital.  Though  he  had  done  his  best,  some  thought  he  should 
have  done  more,  as  is  the  lot  of  any  "unsuccessful"  diplomatist.  The 
entrance  of  Turkey  in  the  War  had  brought  British  statesmen  face  to  face 
with  a  problem  they  had  not  counted  upon  a  scant  three  months  before. 
The  Ottoman  government  was  thought  absolutely  safe,  and  when  it  was 
shown  that  this  was  not  so,  the  men  in  London  were  sure  that  a  guarantee 
for  thirty  years  of  the  integrity  of  the  domain  of  the  empire  was  all  there 
was  needed  to  keep  the  Ottoman  government  satisfied. 

It  is  barely  possible  that  the  Sublime  Porte  would  have  taken  a  thirty 
years'  lease  on  life,  instead  of  venturing  existence  at  a  single  throw, 
though  this  is  not  highly  probable  under  the  circumstances.  The  Young 
Turk  element  was  sure  that  the  rehabilitation  of  their  country  had  to  be 
preceded  by  a  radical  change  in  its  international  status.  With  special 
privileges  held  by  influential  representatives  and  institutions  from  all  parts 
of  the  world,  not  to  mention  the  special  concessions  which  the  capitulations 
were,  the  leaders  of  the  Turkish  government  contemplated  the  prospect 


•144  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

of  national  suicide  with  less  perturbation  than  the  slow  strangulation  of 
government  and  state  and  Osmanli  race  to  which  the  foreigner-controlled 
reign  of  Abdul  Hamid  and  his  immediate  predecessors  had  condemned 
Turkey. 

M.  N.  M.  de  Giers,  the  Russian  ambassador,  had  been  rather  pro- 
German  during  the  days  that  followed  the  assassination  of  the  arch-duke. 
At  any  rate  he  had  always  been  indifferent  to  the  French  and  British 
diplomatists  on  the  Golden  Horn,  following  in  this,  perhaps,  the  inclinations 
of  his  father — the  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  who,  together  with 
Czar  Alexander  III,  had  opposed  the  alliance  with  France.  During  the 
negotiations  on  the  thirty-years  guarantee  for  Turkey,  the  younger  de 
Giers  had  been  more  of  an  interested  spectator  than  a  participant.  M. 
Bompard,  the  French  ambassador,  also,  seemed  incapable  of  furthering 
the  scheme,  though  in  his  case  it  was  rather  a  lack  of  ability  that  handi- 
capped the  undertaking  which  the  British  ambassador  was  promoting. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  de  Giers  took  the  stand,  as  he  expressed  it  to  a 
diplomatic  acquaintance  of  mine,  that,  whatever  might  come  of  the  offer 
made  the  Sublime  Porte,  one  thing  was  certain:  The  status  of  the 
Dardanelles  was  bound  to  be  a  different  one,  after  the  War.  It  was 
this  very  statement  which  later  caused  so  much  anxiety  to  the  Rumanian 
political  group,  headed  by  Senator  Alexandru  Marghiloman,  and  former 
Premier  Peter  Carp,  of  which  more  later  on. 

Whether  or  no  the  Ottoman  government  knew  the  attitude  of  the 
Russian  government  and  its  ambassador  at  Constantinople  makes  little 
difference  now.  The  fact  is  that  the  negotiations  were  cut  short  by  the 
activity  of  Russian  mine-laying  ships  near  the  entrance  to  the  Bosphorus. 
The  Turkish  cabinet  did  not  trust  the  advances  of  the  Entente  diplomatists, 
and  had  no  reason  to  trust  the  Russian  envoy,  who,  moreover,  was  not 
anxious  to  be  trusted.  The  Russian  government  had  made  up  its  mind  to 
get  to  Constantinople  and  the  Dardanelles  this  time — make  or  break. 

The  records  of  the  Russian  government  show  that  up  to  the  beginning 
of  March,  1915,  Sazonoff  had  no  assurance  that  Great  Britain  and  France 
would  honor  Russia's  demands  in  and  around  Constantinople.  It  is  shown 
in  a  telegram,  No.  168,  March  11th,  1917,  sent  to  his  government  by 
Isvolski,  the  Russian  ambassador  at  Paris,  that  a  treaty  between  the 
Russian  and  French  governments,  concerning  the  claims  of  Russia 
generally,  and  those  along  the  Dardanelles  particularly,  was  not  concluded 
until  the  year  1915,  while  from  March  4th  (new  style),  1915,  comes  a 
memorandum  handed  by  Sazonoff  to  the  French  and  British  ambassadors 
in  which  the  intentions  of  Russia  concerning  the  annexation  planned  by 
her  government  are  outlined.  Subject  to  modifications  to  be  stated  further 
on  Russia  wanted  to  wrench  from  the  Ottoman  empire — • 


RUSSIA'S  DREAM  A  DIPLOMATIC  DESIRE  145 

"the  city  of  Constantinople ;  the  western  shores  of  the  Bosphorus, 
Marmora  Sea,  and  the  Dardanelles ;  Southern  Frigia,  to  the  line 
of  Enos-Media ;  the  shores  of  Asia  Minor  between  Bosphorus,  the 
river  Samara,  and  a  point  of  Ismid  Gulf  to  be  determined  later 
on;  the  islands  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  and  the  islands  of 
Imbros  and  Tenedos." 

In  addition  to  stating  that  the  special  interests  of  France  and  Great 
Britain  in  those  territories  were  to  be  respected,  the  memorandum  refers  to 
the  fact  that  Constantinople  was  to  be  recognized  as  a  free  port  for  the 
transit  of  merchandise  not  of  Russian  origin  or  destination,  and  that 
merchant  ships  were  to  have  free  passage  in  the  straits  of  Bosphorus  and 
Dardanelles.  Something  more  is  said  concerning  British  and  French  rights 
in  Asia  Minor,  the  preservation  of  sacred  Mohammedan  places,  and  the 
placing  of  Arabia  under  independent  Mohammedan  rule.  For  Great 
Britain  the  quid  pro  quo  for  all  this  was  to  be  the  inclusion  within  its 
sphere  of  influence  in  Persia  of  the  territory  known  as  the  neutral  zone. 
Not  enough  with  that  Sazonoff  expresses  himself  in  favor  of  separating 
from  the  Turkish  Sultanate  the  Caliphate. 

Shorn  of  all  verbiage  the  conditions  which  Sazonoff  imposed,  and 
which  Great  Britain  and  France  accepted  so  reluctantly,  mean  that  Russia 
would  have  been  in  complete  control  of  the  principal  part  of  the  Ottoman 
empire — Thrace  as  far  west  as  the  Enos-Media  line,  with  the  remainder 
west  of  that  boundary  ceded  to  Bulgaria,  the  city  of  Constantinople, 
Gallipoli  and  the  Dardanelles,  the  Sea  of  Marmora  and  its  islands,  the 
Bosphorus  and  as  much  of  Western  Anatolia  as  Russia  pleased. 

According  to  the  program  of  the  Russian  general  staff  the  Russian 
army  was  to  advance  across  Anatolia,  thence  into  Cilicia,  and  occupation 
would  in  that  event  have  completed  the  annexation  of  all  Turkey.  For 
its  western  neighbor  Russia  in  those  parts  would  have  had  the  Bulgarians ; 
for  its  eastern  frontier  on  this  southward  expansion  its  own  sphere  of 
influence  in  Persia.  In  the  South  the  Taurus  range  would  have  made  a 
most  practical  military  border,  provided  that  Syria  and  Palestine  had  not 
been  annexed;  at  the  entrance  of  the  Dardanelles,  the  islands  of  Tenedos 
and  Imbros,  not  to  mention  the  reefs  known  as  the  Tauschan  or  Rabbit 
islands,  would  have  served  excellently  as  the  sites  of  the  needed  Russian 
Gibraltar s.  If    ;    *?'  "1 

That  the  island  of  Lemnos  is  not  mentioned  in  the  memorandum  is 
rather  surprising,  but  that  may  not  mean  anything,  seeing  that  the  Tauschan 
reefs  were  also  overlooked.  With  that  much  gone  Great  Britain  would 
have  been  driven  out  of  the  Aegean  anyway,  so  the  ignoring  of  an  island 
or  two  would  not  have  mattered.  Lemnos,  moreover,  could  have  been  given 
to  the  Greeks,  who  in  this  classic  bit  of  earth  would  have  seen  the  physical 


146  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

link  that  bound  them  to  the  Greater  Russian  empire — the  Russia  mare, 
which  Sazonoff  had  in  view. 

Of  course,  British  statesmen  trembled  when  they  gave  some  sort  of 
assent  to  this  Russian  program.  What  they  had  promised  Russia  could  be 
snatched  from  the  paws  of  the  bear  only  by  defeat,  or  by  future  political 
maneuvering — one  of  these  was  not  to  be  invited,  and  the  other  lacked  as 
yet  the  very  room  for  its  moves  and  countermoves.  So  we  find  that  on 
March  18th — ^the  fateful — Sazonoff  informs  his  agent  in  Paris,  Isvolski, 
that  on  March  8th,  the  French  ambassador  at  Petrograd  stated  to  him  that 
the  French  government  was  taking  "a  most  friendly  attitude  towards  the 
realization  of  our  desires  *  *  *  in  connection  with  the  straits  and  Constan- 
tinople," for  which  he  instructed  Isvolski  to  express  to  Delcasse  his  ap- 
preciation.   The  telegram  continues: 

"In  his  conversations  with  you,  Delcasse,  even  before, 
repeatedly  expressed  his  assurances  that  we  may  depend  on  the 
sympathy  of  France,  and  only  referred  to  the  necessity  of  clarify- 
ing England's  attitude,  from  which  side  he  feared  objections, 
before  giving  us  more  concrete  assurances  to  the  aforesaid  effect." 

The  excerpt  speaks  for  itself.    The  italics  are  mine. 

There  was  a  little  negotiating  after  that,  on  the  merest  trifles,  com- 
pared with  the  territories  and  interests  that  had  been  written  over  to  the 
Russians.  In  effect  the  situation  remained  what  it  was.  Sazonoff  even 
succeeded  in  persuading  his  allied  governments  that  it  would  be  well  to 
separate  the  Osmanli  Sultanate  from  the  Islam  Caliphate,  which  was  just 
as  well  as  there  was  to  be  no  longer  any  Turkey,  when  the  Russian  minister 
of  foreign  affairs  was  through  with  it.  He  was  willing,  however,  to 
guarantee  the  freedom  of  pilgrimage  to  the  Mohammedans  that  were  to 
pass  under  Muscovite  rule,  which  meant  nothing,  of  course,  considering 
that  the  Mohammedans  of  the  Russian  empire  had  enjoyed  that  privilege 
long  before  Sazonoff  was  born.  As  a  shamming  hair  splitter  the  man  was 
as  exasperating  it  seems  as  an  empire  builder. 

Where  Clarification  Was  Needed 

Such  then  was  the  status  of  Constantinople,  her  waterways,  empire 
and  government,  when  the  necessity  for  military  endeavor  on  a  much 
larger  scale  arose.  One  would  have  thought  that  Russia  would  have 
offered  a  large  army  for  this  "realization"  of  her  "desires."  That  much 
the  Turkish  government  feared,  for  these  things  were  not  unknown  in 
Stamboul.  In  fact  I  discussed  them  with  Said  Halim  Pasha,  the  grand 
vizier,  Enver  Pasha,  minister  of  war,  and  Talaat  Bey,  of  the  interior, 
long  before  a  serious  attempt  was  made  to  carry  them  into  effect.    It  was 


WHERE  CLARIEICATION  WAS  NEEDED  147 

rather  odd  that  in  this  instance  taciturn  diplomacy  shouted  its  plans  to 
the  populace,  or  at  least  that  part  of  the  populace  which  takes  an  interest 
in  such  matters.  There  were  two  neutral  diplomatic  missions  in  Constan- 
tinople where  I  had  no  difficulty  getting  quite  the  latest  turn  and  fashion 
in  diplomacy.  Now  and  then  one  had  to  exercise  a  little  judgment  in  not 
mixing  matters,  but  on  the  whole  I  had  no  trouble  keeping  well  informed. 

There  was  some  talk  in  March  that  the  Russians  intended  landing  a 
large  army  on  the  Black  Sea  coast  of  Thrace,  near  Media.  As  the  result 
of  this  more  Ottoman  troops  were  withdrawn  from  the  Caucasus  and 
Mesopotamia  than  was  wise,  and  the  Ottoman  Second  Army,  which  also 
had  been  intended  for  use  at  the  Gulf  of  Xeros  was  rushed  northward 
overnight,  with  nothing  but  its  cavalry  contingents  remaining  in  the  Kuru 
Dagh  for  emergency  purposes. 

But  the  Russians  made  no  move  in  that  direction. 

Instead  came  news  that  large  bodies  of  British  troops  were  being 
brought  into  the  Mediterranean,  landing  in  Egypt,  on  Cyprus,  and  o« 
the  island  of  Lemnos,  the  principal  bay  of  which,  Mudros,  was  being 
converted  into  a  general  military  base  by  the  British  and  French.  It 
seemed  that  the  Russians  were  too  much  occupied  with  the  Germans  and 
Austrians  in  the  Carpathians  to  care  much  just  then  for  Constantinople 
and  its  environments.  The  Russian  general  staff  had  its  hands  full 
engineering  maneuvers  that  kept  much  of  the  German  army  out  of  France 
— ^the  only  reason  why  the  French  government  and  certain  elements  in 
London  had  acquiesced  into  the  ambitious  schemes  of  Sazonoff.  One 
had  to  spar  for  time,  even  at  the  risk  of  having  a  most  refractious  and 
gluttonous  ally  to  deal  with  later  on. 

That  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  did  not  land  his  forces  on  the  shores  of  Thrace, 
Enos,  if  no  other  place,  caused  general  excitement  in  Turkey,  the  Central 
Powers,  and  throughout  the  world.  By  doing  that  he  would  have  cut  off, 
as  I  have  already  stated,  the  Turks  on  Gallipoli,  and  severed  completely 
their  direct  land  route  of  communication  between  the  peninsula  and  Thrace, 
no  great  calamity  to  be  sure,  since  the  Turks  depended  to  within  eighty  per 
cent  on  transport  by  water — on  the  Dardanelles.  But  edging  a  little 
southward,  as  he  would  have  been  able  to  do,  he  would  have  gained  absolute 
control  of  the  entrance  to  the  Strait  from  the  north,  where  it  joins  the 
Sea  of  Marmora.  Of  course,  the  line  of  fortifications  at  Bulair  was  in 
the  way,  but  that  line  he  could  have  razed  to  the  ground  as  completely 
as  his  supporting  warfleet  had  razed  the  works  at  Kum  Kale  and  Sid-il- 
Bahr,  seeing  that  the  positions  were  open  to  flankal  fire,  and  did  not 
have  the  support  of  other  emplaced  batteries.  The  case  of  the  forts  at 
Bulair  differed  in  that  respect  in  nowise  from  that  of  the  works  at  the 
southern  gate  of  the  Dardanelles. 


148  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

With  the  isthmus  of  Bulair  in  the  hands  of  tht  Allied  troops,  and 
with  the  entrance  to  the  Dardanelles,  opposite  the  town  of  Gallipoli,  com- 
manded by  British  and  French  artillery,  the  Turks  would  have  been 
obliged  to  supply  their  Third  Army  and  the  Third  Army  corps,  the  men 
of  the  coast  batteries,  and  a  few  other  organizations,  over  the  worst  roads 
imaginable.  The  only  railroad  line  in  Anatolia  east  of  the  Dardanelles,  the 
Ancient  Phrygia  Minor,  runs  from  Panderma  to  Smyrna,  and  comes 
nowhere  closer  than  90  miles  to  the  contested  waterway.  Since  it  is  but 
half  the  distance  from  Karabiagh  to  Dardanelles,  no  railroad  transporta- 
tion of  any  sort  would  have  figured  in  the  efforts  of  the  Turks  to  hold 
the  Strait.  Being  familiar  with  the  roads  in  that  part  of  the  world,  and 
the  requirements  of  an  army,  I  may  be  pardoned  for  saying  that  these 
efforts  would  have  been  futile,  in  the  absence  of  good  roads  and  thousands 
of  motor  trucks. 

Instead  of  bringing  that  state  of  affairs  about,  and  giving  himself 
an  excellent  start  for  an  advance  into  Thrace,  Sir  Ian  Hamilton,  selected 
to  land  at  Sid-il-Bahr  and  Ariburnu  for  the  purposes  I  have  already  re- 
ferred to — the  taking  of  the  Atchi  Baba  elevation  and  the  Kodjatchemen 
Dagh.  From  these  points  of  vantage,  and  there  were  others  just  as  good, 
British  long-range  rifles  and  high-angle  pieces  w^ere  to  put  a  period  to 
Turkish  defense  of  the  Dardanelles.  After  that  the  Allied  fleet,  composed 
six  to  one,  of  British  and  French  battleships,  was  to  steam  to  Constanti- 
nople, as  it  was  hoped  it  would  do  in  March  of  that  year. 

But  nothing  came  of  this.  The  Turks  and  their  German  leaders 
realized  what  the  reaching  of  any  prominent  elevations  by  the  Allies  meant 
and  held  on  like  grim  death — doing  themselves  anything  but  a  favor  in 
the  light  of  the  general  situation  which  later  ensued. 

Nobody  would  have  expected  the  British  to  hand  over  to  the  Russians 
two  waterways,  an  inland  sea  of  the  greatest  tactical  importance,  and  a 
city  like  Constantinople.  The  British  would  have  "internationalized"  all 
of  this  gain,  and  "internationalization"  in  this  case  meant  that  the  conditions 
imposed  upon  the  Turk  would  have  been  extended  in  harmony  with  the 
British  and  French  interests  in  Turkey,  as  Sazonoff  said  in  his  memo- 
randum, without  giving  it  at  all  that  meaning.  Russia  would  have  been 
as  near  the  "realization"  of  her  "desires"  as  she  had  been  a  year  before, 
which  was  not  any  too  close. 

Of  course,  the  British  statesmen,  from  whom  Sir  Ian  Hamilton,  ac- 
cording to  rule  and  the  findings  of  the  British  Dardanelles  Commission, 
took  his  orders,  were  playing  a  very  dangerous  game,  ae  Sir  George 
Buchanan  knew  only  too  well.  To  bilk  the  Russians  in  that  manner 
would  have  led  immediately  to  peace  negotiations  between  the  Central 
Powers  and  Russia,  and  these,  as  is  well  known,  were  launched  several 


WHERE  CLARIFICATION  WAS  NEEDED  149 

times  so  far  as  court  circles  in  Petrograd,  Darmstadt  and  Berlin  could 
do  it.  That  a  peace  on  this  basis  was  not  actually  concluded  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  interests  of  Russia  and  Germany  also  clashed  in  and  about 
the  capital  of  Turkey.  Berlin-to-Bagdad  had  indeed  become  an  idee  fixe 
with  the  German  Alldeutschen  and  expansionists,  and  into  this  scheme 
could  not  fit  the  control  of  the  Bosphorus  and  Dardanelles  by  the  Russians. 
The  two  sets  of  expansion  policies  crossed  one  another  at  right  angles  in 
Constantinople  and  permitted  no  satisfactory  modus  vivendi. 

Clarification  Is  No  Longer  Needed 

Good  luck  was  to  play  an  important  role  in  this  highly  critical  situa- 
tion, and,  as  usual,  it  favored  the  British.  The  great  drive  of  the  Germans 
into  Poland  and  Russia  throughout  the  summer  of  1915  left  the  Russian 
government  no  time  to  occupy  itself  with  the  landing  of  a  large  expedi- 
tionary force  in  Thrace.  The  Russian  general  staff  had  its  hands  full  with 
problems  nearer  home.  When  it  found  time  to  breathe,  it  took  stock 
of  a  state  of  affairs  that  left  every  balance  in  favor  of  the  Central  Powers. 
Its  own  army  had  been  routed  and  badly  disorganized  on  a  retreat  that 
left  the  Germans  and  Austro-Hungarians  in  possession  of  twenty  times 
the  territory  the  Russians  had  ever  occupied  in  the  countries  of  their 
enemies.  Fortress  after  fortress,  base  after  base,  had  fallen  into  the  hands 
of  the  antagonist,  and  in  the  territory  of  the  new  front  were  not  to  be 
found  the  fine  strategic  railroad  lines  built  by  the  money  of  French  in- 
vestors, and  which  had  served  so  well  during  the  first  advance. 

Elsewhere  the  outlook  was  just  as  gloomy.  On  the  West  Front  things 
were  stalmate  and  the  War  of  Attrition  was  already  on,  wearing  down 
both  sides  with  fine  impartiality.  In  the  Balkan  the  spectacle  was  dis- 
heartening in  the  extreme.  Bulgaria  had  joined  the  Central  Powers, 
thereby  opening  the  direct  route  from  Berlin  to  Bagdad,  and  making 
possible,  or  at  least  less  difficult,  the  complete  crushing  of  Serbia,  enfant 
gatee  of  the  Russian  government.  Greece  had  refused  to  come  to  the 
assistance  of  Serbia,  despite  a  treaty  that  provided  for  this,  and  in 
Rumania,  the  Marghiloman  faction  was  still  defying  the  Bratianu-Jonescu- 
Filipescu  coalition,  and  was  doing  it  successfully. 

The  Italian  army  was  bleeding  itself  white  on  the  treacherous  Carso, 
without  getting  anywhere,  and  on  Gallipoli  a  sad  chapter  of  the  War  was 
coming  rapidly  to  a  close.  All  summer  long  British  and  Anzac  had  given 
the  Turks  the  fight  of  their  history,  and  when  fall  came  they  were  still  on 
the  ground  they  had  first  occupied.  In  some  cases  even  ground  had  been 
lost.  In  the  Caucasus  and  in  Mesopotamia  things  were  no  better,  and  a 
little  later  Kut-el-Amara  was  retaken  by  the  Turks. 


150  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER         '^ 

Instead  of  thinking  much  of  Zarigrad  on  the  Golden  Horn,  the  Russian 
government  and  people  were  near  distraction.  Both  of  them  were  pa)ring 
the  first  instalment  of  the  debt  Sazonoff  had  heaped  upon  them  in  his  mad 
foreign  policy  and  later  he  gave  up  his  office — favorite  practice  of 
ministers  who  have  plunged  their  own  people,  and  the  world  besides,  into 
war  and  of  a  sudden  feel  the  necessity  of  taking  a  rest — "getting  from 
under"  in  American  parlance.  The  good  luck  of  the  British  statesmen 
in  not  having  to  cope  with  assistance  from  the  Russians,  across  the 
Black  Sea,  was  augmented  by  the  rapid  decline  of  Sazonoff,  and  so  it 
came  to  pass  that  Great  Britain  and  Russia  did  not  have  to  end  the  War 
in  favor  of  Germany  in  order  to  fight  with  each  other  over  the  possession 
of  Constantinople,  her  territory,  and  her  waterways. 

No  matter  how  the  War  with  Germany  would  have  ended  for  Great 
Britain,  she  would  have  been  the  defeated  had  Russia  actually  carried  out 
her  program  of  expansion  southward.  Within  two  decades  Russia  would 
have  had  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora  a  fleet  large  enough  to  control  the 
A^ean  and  the  Mediterranean  Seas,  and  with  that  would  have  been 
coupled  the  loss  of  control  by  Great  Britain  of  the  Suez  Canal.  To 
occupy  the  Turks  and  Germans  at  the  Dardanelles  and  on  Gallipoli  was 
necessary  and  wise,  but  to  do  anything  that  would  actually  place  Great 
Britain  in  a  position  of  having  to  refuse  Russia  that  which  had  been 
promised  her  would  have  been  folly ;  on  the  other  hand  there  would  have 
been  no  British  statesman  who  would  have  dared  to  carry  out  the  terms 
of  the  British-Franco-Russian  entente  in  regard  to  Turkey. 

Viewed  in  the  light  of  national  biology  the  entente  in  question  was 
Great  Britain's  death  warrant.  Small  wonder  that  Delcasse  had  seen  fit 
to  refer  "to  the  necessity  of  clarifying  England's  attitude"  on  the  question. 
Her  statesmen,  after  denying  to  themselves  that  the  traditional  in  interna- 
tional relations  is  the  natural  tendency  of  peoples,  had  been  seized  by  a 
panic,  with  the  result  that  "autocratic**  Russia  forced  from  "liberal"  Great 
Britain  a  concession  which  the  latter  could  not  ultimately  live  up  to,  and 
which  she,  therefore,  intended  contesting  at  a  more  favorable  moment 
than  pressure  of  the  German  armies  just  then  left  the  British  politicians. 

The  British  government  had  no  reason  to  live  up  to  the  terms  Sazonoff 
had  insisted  upon.  Even  the  strong  may  be  placed  under  duress  occasionally, 
and  in  this  instance  the  force  majeure  compelling  Great  Britain  was  not 
alone  the  strength  of  the  Germany  army,  but  the  "desires"  of  Russia,  the 
ally  of  the  British — ^the  same  Russia,  which  for  the  culmination  of  her  de- 
signs in  the  same  direction  had  concluded  with  France,  in  1893,  an  alliance 
calculated  to  put  an  end  to  British  hegemony  in  Asia. 

In  the  light  of  the  entente  regarding  the  partition,  and  so  far  as  Russia 
was  concerned,  the  total  annexation,  of  the  Ottoman  empire,  it  should  be 


CLARIFICATION  NO  LONGER  NEEDED  151 

clear  that  the  Turkish  ministers  took  the  only  course  that  was  open  to 
them.  That  the  Ottoman  cabinet  paid  so  little  attention  to  the  guarantees 
offered  for  the  intregity  of  the  empire  need  not  surprise  the  world  any 
longer,  and  with  that  vanishes  the  vapid  talk  by  diplomatic  propagandists 
who  have  insisted  that  Baron  von  Wangenheim  was  the  evil  genius  of 
Turkey.  What  the  intentions  of  Russia  were  has  been  shown,  and  how 
little  these  were  calculated  to  benefit  the  world  was  demonstrated  by  the 
acts  of  the  British,  for,  with  all  respect  to  the  Russian  people,  we,  who 
are  more  distinctly  of  the  Occident,  would  prefer  to  pass  under  the  rule 
of  Great  Britain  rather  than  under  that  of  a  Romanoff  Russia. 

There  is  one  point  to  which  I  must  hark  back.  I  have  said  that  the 
British  fleet  was  to  steam  to  Constantinople,  together  with  a  small  French 
attachment,  and  that  in  this  manner  the  "realization"  of  Russian  "desires" 
was  to  be  foiled.  The  question  is  permissible:  How  was  this  to  be  done? 
The  presence  of  a  large  British  fleet  would  have  settled  the  problem  at 
the  start.  The  fact  that  some  French  vessels  were  to  be  in  the  Allied  fleet 
in  the  Black  Sea  was  some  argument  against  the  clamour  that  would  have 
come  from  Russia,  for,  as  the  memorandum  of  Sazonoff  admitted : 

"The  French  as  well  as  the  English  government  expressed 
their  assent  to  the  fulfilment  of  our  desires  in  the  event  of  a 
successful  termination  of  the  War  and  the  satisfaction  of  a  series 
of  demands  of  France  and  England  within  the  limits  of  the 
Ottoman  empire  as  well  as  in  other  places." 

Even  the  diplomatically  uninitiated  will  realise  that  the  terms  were 
very  elastic  and  the  possibility  of  interpretation  large  in  these  two  categories 
of  eventualities.  There  was  only  one  thing  to  be  avoided  and  that  was 
actual  occupation  of  any  part  of  Thrace  by  Russian  troops,  and  that 
the  good  fortune  of  war  prevented.  Whether  or  no  fortune  was  equally 
kind  in  placing  the  Straits  of  Constantinople  under  the  control  of  the 
British  at  the  end  of  the  Great  War  remains  to  be  seen. 

Consequences  of  the  Dardanelles  Fiasco 

I  had  been  the  first  to  express  the  opinion  that  the  Allied  fleet  would 
not  get  through  to  Constantinople,  and  that  the  landed  forces  of  Great 
Britain  and  France  would  not  fare  any  better.  Counting  upon  the  renewal 
of  the  stock  of  ammunition  in  the  Turkish  coast  batteries,  and  having 
seen  what  little  actual  damage  had  been  done  to  the  emplacements  along 
the  Outer  Dardanelles  in  an  action  that  cost  the  Allies  three  very  good 
ships,  and  put  six  others  out  of  commission  for  some  time,  I  concluded 
that  an  attack  on  the  strait  would  not  be  repeated  so  long  as  the  War 
was  young  and  every  battleship  a  great  asset. 


152  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

I  did  not  understand  the  full  complexity  of  British-Russian  interests 
at  that  time,  to  be  sure,  but  was  for  all  that  far  from  inclined  of  accepting 
the  advanced  aspect  of  the  case  without  a  healthy  amount  of  skepticism. 
The  dispatches  I  had  written  had  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Ottoman 
and  German  authorities,  with  the  result  that  officers  who  were  my  superiors 
in  matters  of  technical  knowledge  wanted  to  hear  more  of  my  views.  To 
my  great  surprise  I  discovered  that  I  was  almost  the  only  person  in 
Constantinople  who  held  that  the  British  and  French  would  not  renew 
the  attack  by  water  again,  but  would  synchronize  the  next  offensive  with 
a  landing  of  a  large  expeditionary  force — in  the  Gulf  of  Xeros. 

The  case  is  of  no  special  import  except  in  so  far  as  it  shows  that  I 
was  with  the  rest  of  the  world  mistaken  in  the  latter  assumption.  Already 
in  June,  1915, 1  wrote  several  dispatches  in  which  I  indicated  that  ultimately 
the  expedition  on  Gallipoli  would  end  in  withdrawal  by  the  Allies.  One  of 
these,  I  remember,  caused  a  United  States  military  publication  a  great 
deal  of  mirth,  but  the  laugh  was  on  the  other  side  six  months  later.  If 
Sir  Ian  Hamilton  had  set  out  to  find  the  worst  terrain  for  his  troops  he 
could  not  have  done  better  than  at  Sid-il-Bahr,  Ariburnu  and  Suvla  Bay* 
Almost  any  point  along  the  shore  of  the  Xeros  Gulf  would  have  been 
infinitely  better.  But  it  seems  that  the  statesmen  at  home  did  not  allow 
him  too  much  room  for  picking  suitable  landing  places. 

It  has  always  been  bad  policy  to  give  a  military  operation  a  political 
objective,  apart  from  the  ultimate  aim  of  decently  conducted  wars — the 
re-establishment  of  peace  as  quickly  as  possible  with  a  maximum  of  credit 
to  oneself  and  a  minimum  of  injustice  to  the  vanquished. 

Developments  at  the  gates  of  Constantinople  were  to  have  their  effect 
in  the  Balkan  countries.  iAji  interview  I  had  with  the  Bulgarian  premier, 
Dr.  Radoslavoff,  in  February  of  the  same  year,  had  caused  me  to  look  with 
suspicion  upon  the  assertions  of  the  Allied  governments  that  ultimately 
every  Slav  race  would  fight  in  their  camp.  Dr.  Radoslavoff  was  rather 
unfriendly  to  the  Serbs  in  his  remarks,  and  did  not  seem  to  care  who 
knew  it.  At  any  rate,  he  gave  me  permission  to  use  everything  he  said, 
and  my  dispatch  was  not  questioned  by  the  Bulgarian  authorities,  which 
was  not  likely,  however,  seeing  that  no  "preventive"  censorship  existed 
at  that  time. 

Thus  warned  I  was  forearmed  against  the  many  silly  rumors  that 
were  set  adrift  in  Constantinople  by  the  Greek  and  Armenian  sympathizers 
of  the  Entente. 

The  first  report  concerning  Bulgaria  that  interested  me  at  all  seriously 
was  one  which  had  it  that  Bulgaria  and  Turkey  were  coming  together  in 
connection  with  some  matter  affecting  the  railroad  line  Swilengrad — 
Kuleia  Burgas — ^Dimotika,  which  the  Bulgarians  had  to  use  in  order  to 


CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  DARDANELLES  FIASCO      153 

reach  the  port  of  Dedeagatch.  The  Hne  in  question  was  as  far  as  Kuleia 
Burgas,  a  part  of  the  Sofia-Constantinople  trunkline,  and  from  thereon  a 
division  of  the  branchline  to  the  Bulgarian  port  named.  Between  Swilen- 
grad  and  Dimotika  it  ran  then  on  Turkish  territory  and  this  the  Bulgarians 
had  found  rather  vexatious. 

Since  the  Turkish  government  had  no  reason  of  its  own  to  get  rid 
of  the  lines  in  question,  the  report  that  it  intended  ceding  it  to  Bulgaria, 
and  was  willing  to  make  some  other  border  "rectifications"  at  its  own 
expense,  the  remarks  of  Dr.  Radoslavoff,  to  which  I  will  come  back  further 
on,  began  to  have  a  new  meaning  to  me.  In  August  of  1915,  the  negotia- 
tions were  completed,  and  after  that  entrance  into  the  war  by  Bulgaria 
on  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers  seemed  certain  to  all  who  had  followed 
developments. 

Mr.  Koulocheflf,  the  Bulgarian  minister  in  Constantinople,  had  taken 
a  hand  in  the  negotiations,  of  course,  but  was  no  great  admirer  of  the 
sudden  rapprochement  of  the  two  countries,  which  the  agreement  concern- 
ing the  border  rectification  represented.  He  took  the  view  of  the  Bulgarian 
Nationalists — men  of  the  Guechoflf  type — who  felt  that  it  was  the  duty 
of  Bulgaria  to  stand  by  Russia  through  thick  and  thin. 

For  the  Turks  Mr.  Koulocheflf  had  little  use,  and  of  their  military 
capacity  he  was  ever  unconvinced.  I  remember  having  a  conversation  with 
him  on  the  prospects  on  Gallipoli.  The  number  of  Turkish  dead  and 
wounded  he  mentioned  was  so  great  that  I  had  to  wonder  how  a  man  in 
his  position  could  believe  such  a  fable.  He  was  also  of  the  opinion  that 
before  very  long  the  Allied  forces  would  place  themselves  in  possession  of 
the  peninsula  and  that  the  taking  of  Constantinople  was  then  a  matter  of 
days.  I  took  particular  pains  to  set  Mr.  Koulocheflf  right  on  these  points, 
and  did  not  earn  his  appreciation  therefor. 

To  Mr.  Koulocheflf,  as  to  a  good  many  other  Bulgarians,  it  seemed 
at  that  time  that  their  country  ought  to  take  arms  on  the  side  of  the 
Allies.  The  imminent  possibility  of  having  Russia  for  a  neighbor  who 
would  not  be  satisfied  with  an  all  water  route  to  Constantinople,  but  who, 
as  strong  imperial  states  will  do,  would  find  highly  desirable  the  direct 
rail  connection  to  the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus,  did  not  seem  to  bother 
these  Bulgarians.  Such  has  ever  been  the  case  when  in  diplomacy  senti- 
ment takes  the  place  of  the  practical  things  that  constitute  the  necessities 
of  nations  and  individuals  alike.  Idealism  of  any  sort  is  a  condiment 
that  renders  even  more  unpalatable  the  sorry  broth  of  international  relations 
cooked  by  the  diplomatists. 


IX 

BULGARIA  VERSUS  SERBIA 

TURKEY  had  entered  the  War  in  self-defence ;  Bulgaria  was  to  do 
the  same  presently.  The  governments  of  the  two  countries  were 
face  to  face  with  a  situation  that  could  be  solved  in  no  other  manner. 
They  took  refuge  to  the  ultima  ratio,  because  they  were  driven  to  it.  Vital 
factors  in  national  life — national  existence  in  the  case  of  the  Turks;  the 
Serbian  danger  in  that  of  the  Bulgarians — ^had  become  the  forces  in  crises 
that  meant  going  to  war  with  either  of  the  two  camps  of  Europe. 

It  is  difficult  enough  in  times  of  peace  to  take  matters  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  diplomatists,  once  they  have  made  up  their  minds  to  straighten 
them  out,  according  to  their  wishes ;  it  is  impossible  to  make  them  release 
their  hold  of  a  case  in  times  of  war.  Both  sides,  then,  have  something  to 
gain  and  after  a  tug  of  war  of  wits  one  of  them  has  it  its  own  way. 
That  had  happened  in  Constantinople.  It  was  to  take  place  again  in  Sofia. 
The  Turks  had  gone  to  war  when  the  harvest  of  1914  was  in,  and  the 
Bulgarians  did  the  same  when  the  crops  of  1915  had  been  housed.  In  the 
Balkan  especially  men  do  not  go  to  war  at  any  other  time,  as  a  rule. 
Agricultural  countries  cannot  afford  to  lose  what  is  often  their  only 
substance. 

When  I  say  that  the  political  disturbances  and  wars  of  the  Balkan 
peoples  have  been  almost  entirely  of  ethnological  and  demographic  origin, 
I  mean,  of  course,  that  they  have  been  this  more  pronouncedly  than  in 
other  parts,  for  wars,  generally,  have  this  as  causal  agent,  even  in  such 
cases  when  purely  political,  dynastic  or  religious  differences  led  to  trouble. 
In  the  lives  of  men  everything  is  contained  in,  and  comes  to  be  the  cause 
of,  the  preservation  of  the  self  and  propagation.  It  is  so  with  races  and 
nations.  The  fact  that  organized  society  has  found  the  means  to  keep 
its  human  units  from  being  constantly  at  each  other's  throat  is,  in  fact,  the 
best  indication  that  a  society  of  nations,  based  on  justice  and  enlightened 
self-interest,  is  feasible  and  the  best  insurance  that  may  be  had  for  a 
sweeping  reduction  of  the  possibilities  of  war. 

The  tendency  to  forget  that  life  in  the  Balkans  is  still  very  elementary, 
and  therefore  closer  to  the  biological  actualities  than  elsewhere,  has  been 
the  principal  reason  why  the  peoples  in  the  peninsula  and  their  problems 
have  seemed  so  inexplicable.      Those   who  believe  that   Serb,   Bulgar, 

154 


BULGARIA  VERSUS  SERBIA  155 

Macedonian  and  Albanian  would  prefer  to  come  to  blows  over  a  difference 
that  seems  perfectly  adjudicable,  instead  of  composing  it  in  an  amicable 
spirit,  forget  that  the  primitive  facts  of  life  are  the  hardest  to  deny. 
We  have  an  example  of  this  in  two  wide-awake  businessmen  of  the  city, 
who  will  give  their  case  into  the  hands  of  their  lawyers  for  arbitration, 
while  the  farmer  will  hardly  ever  do  that.  It  is  nothing  for  a  farmer  to 
spend  more  money  in  the  pursual  of  a  claim  to  a  rod  of  land  than  the 
subject  of  litigation  is  worth.  It  is  so  with  nations  everywhere.  We  do 
not  wonder  at  that  usually,  but  when  the  difficulty  is  shown  up  in  the 
light  of  primitive  necessity  we  must  needs  think  it  extraordinary,  if  we 
happen  to  be  removed  from  the  plane  on  which  the  quarrel  moves. 

The  population  of  the  relatively  very  small  Balkan  peninsula  is  more 
diverse  than  that  of  any  other  area  of  similar  extent.  The  Balkan  in 
fact  is  inhabited  by  almost  as  many  races  as  the  remainder  of  Europe: 
Bulgar,  Serb,  Greek,  Kutzo-Vlakh,  Macedonian,  Albanian,  Italian,  Turk 
and  Rumanian,  with  many  other  divisions  possible  if  one  should  set  out 
to  do  it.  For  instance,  the  Serb  may  assert  that  the  Croat  is  a  Serb 
also,  yet  I  have  known  many  Croats  who  denied  that,  answering  the 
claim  of  the  Serb  with  the  statement  that  to  be  a  Southern  or  Jugo-Slav 
was  in  itself  no  proof  that  one  was  a  Serb.  The  Slovene  may  do  the  same 
thing,  as  may  the  Bosniak,  the  Dalmatian  and  the  Montenegrin.  The 
Southern  Wallachian,  or  Kutzo-Vlakh,  certainly  is  no  Serb,  as  some  would 
have  him.  If  related  at  all  to  any  of  the  people  now  on  the  Balkan,  he 
is  the  cousin  of  the  Rumanian.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Bulgar  has  claimed, 
and  the  Macedonian  has  by  his  conduct  admitted,  that  these  two  belong 
together.  To  meet  that  argument  it  has  been  asserted  that  the  Bulgar  was 
not  a  Slav  at  all,  but  of  Turanian  extraction,  to  which  may  be  given  the 
retort  that  the  Macedonians,  numbering  about  one  and  one-half  millions, 
are  at  best  a  mixture  of  the  race  now  known  as  Bulgars,  and  Albanian, 
Greek  and  Serb  elements. 

It  is  not  my  plan  to  enter  here  the  maze  of  ethnology  which  the 
population  of  the  Balkan  peninsula  forms.  Volumes  and  volumes,  veritable 
libraries,  have  been  written  on  this  subject,  and  while  the  propaganda 
of  Serb  and  Bulgar  alike  may  easily  mislead  us,  the  fact  is  that  impartial 
observers  have  generally  agreed  upon  this :  That  the  Bulgarians  of  today 
are  not  the  pure  Turanian  tribe  which  invaded  the  peninsula  about  679 
A.  D.,  being  instead,  as  is  natural,  the  product  to  some  extent  of  the  people 
whom  they  found  in  what  is  now  Bulgaria  and  Macedonia,  the  Old- 
Slovenes. 

Though  the  Bulgars  made  themselves  the  masters  of  the  country  and 
formed  the  ruling  caste  for  about  a  century  they  were  already  completely 
Slavicised  in  the  middle  of  the  Ninth  Century,  according  to  Byzantine 


156  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

historians,  who  had  no  reason  to  love  them.  Moreover,  it  is  not  at  all  certain 
that  the  Bulgarians,  were  still  a  pure  Turanian  tribe  when  they  appeared 
on  the  Balkans.  They  had  for  so  long  lived  on  the  river  Volga  in  what 
is  now  Russia  that  they  either  gave  their  name  to  the  river  or  were 
called  after  it :  Volgarians,  a  term  which  modification  by  Byzantine  writers 
converted  into  Bulgarians. 

The  Roots  of  ''Balkan"  Diplomacy 

But  even  the  Old- Slovenes  were  at  that  time  no  longer  a  pure  race, 
if  it  is  to  be  assumed  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  racial  purity.  They  had 
themselves  arrived  but  lately,  in  650  A.  D.,  on  the  peninsula,  driven  hither 
by  the  pressure  from  the  East — a  pressure  which,  in  the  absence  of  definite 
data,  has  ever  struck  the  historian  as  something  uncanny,  has,  indeed,  been 
likened  by  some  to  the  instinct  that  guides  migratory  birds.  At  any  rate 
the  Old-Slovenes  had  settled  in  a  country  before  them  held,  in  the  order 
named,  by  Dacians,  Thracians,  Kelts,  Huns,  Goths,  Gepides  and  an  older 
Slav  tribe. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Old- Slovenes  and  the  Bulgars  found  in  a 
country  as  mountainous  as  the  Balkan  peninsula,  especially  in  the  more 
inaccessible  districts  of  the  wild  and  densely  wooded  ranges,  descend- 
ants of  all  of  these  people.  While  it  has  been  possible  to  eliminate 
from  plain  and  valley  populations  entirely,  it  has  ever  been  difficult  to 
overcome  and  dislodge  them  completely  in  the  mountains.  Indeed,  we  have 
in  the  Balkans  a  very  striking  example  of  this  in  the  Albanians,  a  fairly 
pure  type  of  Illyrians,  who  at  one  time  inhabited  the  western  parts  of 
the  peninsula  entirely.  Another  example  of  this  are  the  Kelts,  who, 
after  having  been  displaced  by  the  pressure  from  the  East,  continued  their 
migration  westward  and  strewed  the  Alps  with  their  racial  remnants, 
where  we  find  them  today,  and  finally  landed  as  far  West  as  conditions 
permitted — in  extreme  Western  France  and  the  British  isles. 

The  Bulgarian  of  today,  then,  is  a  composite  predominantly  Slav, 
speaking  the  language  of  the  Old-Slovenes,  which  statement  may  be 
supplemented  in  all  prudence  with  the  remark  that  the  early  culture  and 
literature  of  the  Slavs,  anywhere,  was  of  Bulgarian  origin.  The  alphabet 
of  the  Russians,  and  until  quite  recently  that  of  the  Rumanians,  is  the 
Kyrillika,  an  adaption  of  the  Greek  letters  to  the  phonetic  requirements 
of  the  Slav,  more  especially,  the  Bulgarian,  language.  Two  Bulgars,  the 
Bishops  Kyril  and  Methode,  are  the  inventors  of  this  alphabet. 

The  Serbs  and  Croats,  or  Serbo-Croats,  seem  to  be  a  race  that  under- 
went no  such  viccissitudes.  A  Slave  race  originally,  they  assimilated  or 
displaced  the  people  they  found  in  the  northwestern  parts  of  the  peninsula, 


THE  ROOTS  OF  "BALKAN"  DIPLOMACY  157 

and  were  not  molested  by  the  Turanian  invaders,  who  later  gave  their 
name  to  the  country  known  as  Bulgaria.  Whether  or  no  the  Serbs  were 
of  immediately  the  same  stock  as  the  Old-Slovenes  is  not  known,  but  the 
closest  relationship  existed.  There  is  also  the  fact  that  the  two  tribes 
invaded  the  Balkans  almost  simultaneously,  with  the  Serbs  a  few  years  in 
the  lead,  so  far  as  final  settlement  is  concerned.  How  the  Croats  came 
to  be  so  closely  linked  with  them  is  not  known  reliably.  At  any  rate  for 
centuries  they  lived  together  in  such  harmony  as  the  political  aspirations 
of  the  Serb  element  permitted,  and  later  separated  somewhat  on  account 
of  religious  divergence.  The  Serbs  remained  Greek-Catholic,  the  Croats 
embraced  the  Roman-Catholic  faith,  and  most  of  the  people  of  Bosnia 
and  Herzegovina,  elected  to  become  Mohammedans.  The  Serbo-Croat  race 
inhabits  today,  starting  in  the  North,  Slavonia,  Syrmia,  the  greater  part 
of  Dalmatia,  Bosnia,  Herzegovina,  Serbia,  Montenegro  and  Northern 
Macedonia. 

I  must  in  this  connection  draw  attention  to  a  map,  issued  by  M.  St. 
Stanoievitch,  professor  of  Serb  history  at  the  University  of  Belgrade, 
and  D.  J.  Derocco,  a  Serbian  professor  of  geography.  The  map  in  ques- 
tion has  been  circulated  broadcast  for  the  propaganda  purposes  of  the 
Serbian  government,  and  was  given  to  me  by  one  of  its  agents  for  my 
own  enlightenment  in  1915.  I  mention  this  fact,  together  with  the  map, 
because  it  caused  me  to  take  a  closer  interest  in  the  demographic  problems 
on  the  Balkan.  For  the  sake  of  peace  in  the  future,  I  must  hope  that 
this  perversion  of  the  engraver's  art  did  not  influence  the  members  of 
the  Peace  Conference  at  Paris. 

I  have  defined  the  actual  limits  of  Serbo^Croatia  above.  The  best 
authorities  agree  that  the  districts  named  are  inhabited  by  Serbs  and  Croats. 
The  authors  of  the  map  in  question  go  much  further,  after  including,  for 
the  convenience  and  weight  of  argument,  the  Slovenes  and  their  territory, 
into  their  scheme.  For  the  sake  of  those  whom  such  matters  may  par- 
ticularly interest,  I  will  trace  here  what  Messrs.  Stanoievitch  and  Derocco 
think  Serbo-Croat- Slovene  territory.  After  having  laid  its  boundary  on  a 
map,  the  observer  will  all  the  better  understand  why  Bulgar  and  Serb 
came  to  blows  in  1915.  The  map  was  already  out  and  excited  the  Sofia 
Foreign  Office,  the  government,  and  the  people  as  nothing  could  have  done. 
There  are  some  varieties  of  propaganda  that  are  a  direct  provocation  of 
war,  and  this  is  one  such  instance. 

The  limits  of  Jugo-Slavia,  I  will  call  it  that,  though  the  map  leaves 
us  to  infer  that  the  limits  are  those  of  Greater  Serbia — the  Serbia  mare, 
run  as  follows: 

Along  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Adriatic  Sea,  without  regard  for 
Italian  claims,  from  the  mouth  of  the  Isonzo  to  the  mouth  of  the  river 


158  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Drime,  thence  to  the  Proclevitie  Mts.,  Pachtrick  Mts.,  Babachnitza  Mts., 
Horab  and  Tablanitza  Mts.,  Lake  Ochrida,  Galitchitsa  Mts.,  Lake  Prespa, 
Neretchka  Mts.,  Nitche  Mts.,  Hoyouf  Mts.,  Blatetz  Mts.,  Lake  Doiran, 
Belasitza  Mts.,  around  the  Strumnitza  district,  to  follow  the  crests  of  the 
Osgovia  Mts.,  along  the  old  Bulgaro-Serb  border,  then  along  the  Danube 
as  far  west  as  Moldawa ;  thence  into  Hungary  and  Austria,  from  Oravitza 
to  Tchakovo,  Nadjlak,  Mako,  Szegedine,  Seksarde,  Baroese,  thence  to 
a  point  immediately  south  of  Velika-Kagnija,  to  St.  Gothard ;  thence  into 
Austria  north  of  Marburg  in  the  Carinthian  Alps,  to  Klagenfurt,  Villach, 
along  the  river  Drava,  south  again  into  the  Carinthian  Alps,  whence  it 
enters  Italy  near  the  town  of  Pontebba,  to  approach  the  banks  of  the 
Tagliamento,  and  finally  to  continue  in  a  slight  southeasterly  direction  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Isonzo. 

There  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  a  Serbian  government  under 
Pashitch,  should  not  emulate  the  example  of  the  Russian  government  under 
Sazonoff.  So  it  would  seem.  Yet  the  fact  is  that  such  intemperance  will 
not  serve  the  peace  of  the  world.  In  this  instance  it  was  directly  responsible 
for  the  war  between  Serbia  and  Bulgaria,  and  a  further  expansion  of  the 
War  of  Europe. 

The  claims  of  the  map  in  question  had  the  backing  of  the  Serb 
government.  They  could  not  but  fan  into  flame  the  animosity  between  the 
two  peoples,  for  in  addition  to  the  great  boundaries  drawn  the  map  shows 
zones — clairsemie — as  the  two  authors  put  it,  in  which  the  Serbo-Croat 
race  was  more  or  less  scattered,  according  to  admission. 

The  first  of  these  zones  takes  in  much  of  Albania,  eastern  Epirus  and 
northern  Greece,  without  paying  the  slightest  attention  to  the  presence 
of  some  160,000  Kutzo-Vlakhs  located  along  the  actual  borders  of  Albania, 
Macedonia  and  Greece,  and  this  in  a  country  very  thinly  populated.  The 
third  seems  like  an  annextion  of  the  Strumnitza  district,  which,  as  I  happen 
to  know  from  personal  observation,  is  peopled  exclusively  by  Bulgars, 
Macedonians,  Turks  and  Gypsies.  Zone  ntunber  four  includes  the  better 
half  of  the  Banat,  including  the  city  of  Temesvar,  the  fifth  and  sixth  zones 
lie  immediately  north  and  south  of  the  Hungarian  capital,  Budapest, 
where  some  Croats  are  to  be  found  as  immigrants,  engaged  in  gardening 
mostly.  The  seventh  zone  clairsentSe  comprises  most  of  the  Hungarian 
comitats  of  Baragna  and  Chomodje,  and  the  eighth  and  last  claims,  for 
the  Slovenes,  the  comitats  of  Vaghe  and  Choprone  and  Lower  Austria 
between  "Viener  Naichtate,*'  as  Wiener  Neustadt  is  naively  spelled  and 
a  point  on  the  Danube  halfway  between  Vienna  itself  and  Marchegg. 

To  the  authors  of  the  map  it  seems  to  have  made  no  difference  that 
Greater  Serbia  would  have  annexed  every  Italian  along  the  shores  of  the 
Adriatic,    Albanians,    Kutzo-Vlakhs,    every    Macedonian,    Greeks,    Old- 


THE  ROOTS  OF  "BALKAN'*  DIiPIX>MACY  159 

Bulgars,  Rumanians,  Magyars,  and  German  Austrians,  and  that  in  doing 
this  it  would  have  given  rise  to  a  series  of  "irredentas"  that  would  have 
kept  Europe  in  turmoil  for  centuries.  Such  is  geography  as  the  hand 
maiden  of  political  propaganda  and  diplomacy. 

SazonofiF's  Policy  Toward  Bulgaria 

The  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  1913,  of  which  Sazonoff  was  the  evil  genius, 
despite  his  obviously  Bulgarophile  telegrams  to  his  Serbophile  minister  at 
Belgrade,  M.  Hart  wig,  that  he  use  his  influence  with  Pashitch  for  the 
securing  of  better  terms  for  Bulgaria,  had  left  the  Bulgars  in  a  bitter 
mood.  Among  the  things  which  the  Bulgarian  does  not  possess,  in 
common  with  his  Slav  cousins,  is  the  light-heartedness  and  sense  of  humor, 
which,  coupled  with  a  strong  tendency  toward  day-dreaming  and  easy 
surrender  to  the  supposedly  inevitable,  have  made  Slav  government 
throughout  Europe  anything  but  agreeable.  The  treaty  in  question  deprived 
the  Bulgar  not  only  of  what  he  had  fought  for  in  the  Balkan  War,  but 
it  deprived  him  of  territory  of  his  own  besides,  the  major  part  of  the 
Dobrudja,  which  Sazonoff,  as  guardian  angel  of  Bulgaria,  gave  to  the 
Rumanians  for  their  military  excursion  in  the  direction  of  Sofia. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  Bulgarians  were  the  angels  they 
made  themselves  out  to  be.  Far  from  it.  I  have  followed  their  line  of 
march  in  Thrace  on  the  highways  from  Usiinkoprii  to  Kazan  and  thence 
to  Bulair,  and  happen  to  know  that  a  great  deal  of  wanton  destruction 
was  practiced  to  the  detriment  and  eradication  of  the  Turk.  For  that 
at  least  I  did  not  have  to  take  the  statements  of  the  inhabitants.  The  ruins 
spoke  for  themselves.  Since  Turk  and  Bulgar  have  an  architecture  of 
their  own  for  dwelling  purposes,  I  had  no  difficulty  observing  that  the 
Bulgarian  army  set  afire  only  the  houses  of  the  Turks,  and  left  those 
of  the  Bulgarians  untouched.  I  was  able,  in  that  manner  to  ascertain  that 
the  population  of  Thrace,  of  Bulgar  origin,  was  a  very  large  one,  after  the 
Turks  had  been  driven  out  by  arson  and  pillage. 

The  Bulgarians  also  wanted  just  a  little  more  than  was  their  due. 
Thrace  was  to  be  theirs  as  far  as  the  Enos-Media  line,  upon  which  line 
Sazonoff  later  fixed  for  his  own  boundary  in  "Frigia,"  as  says  his 
memorandum.  Southward  and  eastward  they  wanted  the  country  as  far 
west  as  the  right  bank  of  the  Struma  river,  that  is  Seres,  Drama  and 
Cavalla,  in  Old  Thessaly,  and  Macedonia  was  to  be  joined  to  Old-Bulgaria. 
Bulgaria's  claims  were  honored  only  in  part  by  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest, 
and  to  Rumania  she  had  to  cede  a  part  of  the  Dobrudja — the  best  part, 
naturally. 

The  Macedonia  of  today  is  but  a  fraction  of  the  Macedonia  held  by 


160  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Alexander  of  renown  and  his  father,  Phillip.  Authorities  agree  in  the 
main  that  it  is  that  part  of  the  Balkans  which  lies  within  the  Karadagh 
mountain  range,  the  frontier  of  Bulgaria,  the  river  Mesta,  the  Aegean 
Sea,  the  Greek  boundary,  and  the  crests  of  the  ranges  of  Shar,  Grammus 
and  Pindus.  The  district  is  now  inhabited,  to  the  number  of  roughly 
1,500,000,  by  a  mixed  people  of  predominantly  Bulgarian  origin,  with  an 
admixture  of  Serbs,  Greeks  and  Albanians,  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  a 
sort  of  racial  twilight  zone,  in  which  the  Bulgarian  Macedonians  finally 
disappear.  The  natural  result  of  this  is  that  it  would  be  extremely  difficult 
to  draw  a  demographic  line,  or  boundary,  that  would  please  everybody. 

To  the  claims  of  the  inhabitants  in  Southern  Macedonia,  the  Serbs 
had  not  been  able  to  raise  great  objections  at  the  preliminary  peace  con- 
ference in  London.  These  people,  it  seems,  wanted  to  join  Bulgaria,  as 
I  was  told  by  one  of  their  distinguished  comitadje  leaders.  Colonel 
Protogeroff,  who  later  commanded  a  Bulgarian  division  against  the 
troops  landed  by  the  Allies  at  Salonika.  But  it  was  different  with  the 
Macedonians  in  the  northern  parts  of  the  district,  who  also  were  eager 
to  join  the  Bulgarian  kingdom.  The  Serbian  government  contested  their 
claim,  and  held  that  the  site  in  question,  the  districts  of  Uskub  and 
Tetovo,  had  always  been  a  part  of  Old-Serbia.  The  district  then  became 
known  in  diplomatic  parlance  as  the  sone  contestee,  while  the  remainder 
of  Macedonia  was  labelled  zone  incontestee.  These  two  zones  were  to 
become  the  principal  bone  of  contention  just  before  Bulgaria's  entry  into 
the  European  War. 

It  being  impossible  to  apply  the  yardstick  or  thermometer  to  the 
quality  of  effort  and  degree  of  success  of  armies  that  are  allied  in  war, 
the  Serbs  had  let  it  be  known  that  they  themselves  had  defeated  the  Turks, 
and  driven  them  out  of  Albania,  Macedonia  and  the  country  along  the 
Aegean  shore.  The  Greeks  claimed  most  of  the  remaining  credit,  and 
so  it  came  that  Bulgaria  found  not  the  necessary  support  in  world  public 
opinion  in  order  to  retain  what  her  troops  had  occupied,  among  this  much 
more  of  Thrace  than  was  in  the  end  awarded.  The  diplomatic  stage, 
moreover,  had  been  set  against  Bulgaria.  Yet  the  fact  is  that  the 
Bulgarian  mobilization  of  1912  reached  the  total  of  over  600,000,  while 
the  casualties  were  about  93,000,  a  shockingly  high  percentage.  The 
Serbian  and  Greek  forces  and  losses  were  as  one  to  three  in  this. 

Without  wishing  to  question  at  all  the  efficiency  and  the  motives  of 
the  Serb  and  Greek  leaders,  the  fact  remains  that  the  Bulgarians  did  a 
good  sixty  per  cent  of  the  fighting,  and  her  Allies  forty  per  cent  together, 
if  it  be  possible  to  reduce  so  controvertible  a  thing  to  definite  quantities. 

As  will  happen  when  so  infallible  an  institution  as  a  General  Staff 
takes  to  figures,  the  quality  of  the  Turk  as  soldier  had  been  sadly  under- 


SAZONOFF'S  POLICY  TOWARD  BULGARIA  161 

rated,  and  so  it  came  that  Bulgaria,  instead  of  being  able  to  conclude  the 
war  with  the  army  she  was  to  employ  in  co-operation  with  her  Allies,  had 
to  actually  treble  it,  while  Serbia  increased  her  contingent  only  from 
150,000  to  201,115.  That  figure  alone  proves  who  fought  and  won  the 
Balkan  War. 

The  Bulgarians  thought  that  their  grievances  against  the  Serbs  ought 
to  be  presented  to  Czar  Nicholas,  as  arbiter  in  the  case  of  the  contested 
zone.  But  Nicholas  was  not  Alexander  II,  who  had  made  the  liberation 
of  the  Bulgars  a  fact.  He  was  following  more  or  less  the  example  of  his 
father,  Alexander  III,  who  cared  little  for  the  waif  in  the  Balkans,  and 
was  very  much  put  out  when  Eastern  Rumelia  was  joined  to  Bulgaria  in 
1885.  It  seems  that  the  czar  resented  very  much  that  one  of  the  provisions 
of  the  San  Stefano  Treaty  should  have  been  carried  into  effect  without 
his  specific  permission.  The  father  of  Alexander  III  was  one  of  the 
high-contracting  parties  to  this  agreement,  and  his  son  might  have  been 
consulted  by  Bulgaria,  in  all  propriety.  The  fact  was,  however,  that  the 
foundling  state  in  the  Balkan  was  growing  up,  and  that  its  government 
began  to  feel  at  home  a  little.  The  czar  gave  vent  to  his  peevishness 
by  ordering  home  all  the  Russian  officers  serving  in  the  Bulgarian  army, 
at  a  time  when  attack  on  Bulgaria  by  Serbia  or  Turkey,  or  both,  was  not 
entirely  out  of  the  question.  This  was  the  first  rift  in  the  lute  of  Russo- 
Bulgarian  relations,  which  in  the  past  had  been  those  of  mother  and  child. 

Prince  Alexander  of  Battenberg,  a  favorite  of  Alexander  II,  had  been 
installed  at  Sofia  as  ruler,  under  a  Turkish  suzerainty  that  was  barely  more 
than  a  name.  When  the  successor  to  the  Czar  Liberator  gave  Bulgaria 
to  understand  that  in  the  future  she  could  not  count  on  Russia,  the  resent- 
ment of  the  Bulgarians  even  affected  the  reigning  prince.  A  conspiracy 
among  Bulgarian  officers  resulted  in  Prince  Alexander's  kidnapping  and 
removal  to  the  nearest  Russian  town,  Reni  on  the  Danube.  Saner  elements 
in  Sofia  started  a  counter  move  and  a  little  later  the  prince  was  back, 
to  find,  however,  that  his  position  was  untenable.  He  appointed  a  regency 
and  departed. 

Bulgaria's  Independence  Displeased  Czar 

There  were  those  who  felt  the  necessity  of  coming  to  terms  with 
Czar  Alexander,  and  the  throne  being  vacant,  they  proposed  that  it 
should  be  occupied  by  Prince  Waldemar  of  Denmark,  brother  of  the 
Russian  empress.  But  the  prince  declined,  as  Bulgarians  have  insisted, 
at  the  instigation  of  the  Russian  emperor,  if  the  refusal  of  consent  could 
be  called  that.     The  following  year  Prince  Ferdinand  of  Coburg  was 


162  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

offered  the  throne  and  accepted.  Russia,  however  did  not  recognize  him 
until  1896,  when  Czar  Nicholas  was  prevailed  upon  to  do  that,  on  the 
condition,  however,  that  Prince  Boris,  the  heir-presumptive,  be  re-baptized 
to  the  Greek  Catholic  Church,  having  up  to  that  time  been  a  Roman 
Catholic,  as  was  his  father  and  family. 

The  assassination  of  King  Alexander  of  Serbia  and  his  queen,  Draga, 
in  1903,  which  put  the  Austrophile  Obrenovitch  family  of   Serb  rulers 
out  of  the  way  for  the  benefit  of  the  Karageorgevitch  dynasty,  opened  a 
new  chapter  in  Balkan  history.     King  Peter  of   Serbia  did  his  best  to 
cultivate  good  relations  with  St.  Petersburg  and  after  a  while  got  sufficiently 
into  the  good  graces  of  Czar  Nicholas  to  get  from  him  an  annual  stipend, 
such  a  donation  having  in  the  past  been  accepted  from  the  Austro-Hun- 
garian  government  by  Kings  Alexander  and  Milan.     Thereafter  in  all 
matters  of  hostile  contact,  and  there  was  little   friendly   contact  with 
Bulgaria  at  any  time,  the  Russian  government  sided  openly  with  the 
Serbian  government.     Friction  ran  from  the  appointment  of  bishops  to 
opposition  in  Russia  and  Serbia  to  the  establishment  of  complete  independ- 
ence from  the  Ottoman  government  for  the  Bulgarians,  effected  finally  in 
1908,  as  an  incident  to  the  annexation  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  by 
Austria-Hungary.     The  vassalage  to  the  Turks  had  been  a  very  light 
burden,  indeed,  but  there  was  no  reason  why  the  Bulgars  should  not 
throw  it  off.    Isvolski  had  been  tricked  into  acquiescence  to  the  annexation 
by  Austria-Hungary  of  the  last  two  quasi-Ottoman  provinces  along  the 
border  of  the  Dual  Monarchy,  but  the  two  promoters  of  this  expansion 
coup.    Counts    Aehrenthal    and    Berchtold,    had    also    arranged    it    with 
Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria,  to  do  whatever  he  could  to  draw  a  red  herring 
across  their  trail.     Ferdinand,  therefore,  said  himself  loose,  forever  and 
always,   from  the   Turkish   Sultanate,   promptly   disconcerted   European 
diplomacy  generally,  and  later  was  made  a  "czar"  himself,  that  being  his 
official  title  as  king.     To  the  real  czar  of  the  Slav  world,  Nicholas  II, 
that  was  no  mean  affront.     Bulgaria  had  taken  the  second  step  in  her 
national  up-building  without  paying  much  attention  to  what  St.  Petersburg 
throught  of  it,  and  again  a  Romanoff  was  peeved. 

So  it  came  that  Sazonoff,  while  supervising  the  making  of  the  terms 
of  the  Bucharest  Treaty  of  1913,  was  not  in  any  way  friendly  to  the 
Bulgars.  He  did,  indeed,  send  a  few  telegrams  to  the  Serbian  government 
in  which  the  cause  of  Bulgaria  was  espoused.  But  it  must  be  borne  in 
mind  that  the  oldest  trick  of  diplomacy  consists  of  that.  M.  Hart  wig,  the 
Russian  minister  at  Belgrade,  had  his  own  instructions,  and  M.  Pashitch 
also  knew  how  these  appeals  to  reason  were  meant.  To  make  a  long  story 
short,  the  peace  treaty  in  question  left  Bulgaria  not  only  without  some 
territory  she  coveted  unjustifiedly,  but  without  much  to  which  she  really 


BULGARIA'S  INDEPENDENCE  DISPLEASED  CZAR      163 

was  entitled  on  ethnological  and  military  grounds.  To  the  Serbs  she  lost 
Macedonia,  to  the  Greeks,  Seres,  Drama  and  Cavalla,  and  to  the  Turks, 
Adrianople  and  much  of  Thrace,  while  the  Rumanians  amputated  her  of  the 
fattest  part  of  the  Dobrudja. 

These  claims  must  be  given  a  little  more  attention.  That  the  Mace- 
donians wanted  to  join  Bulgaria  is  established  beyond  cavil.  In  their  case 
it  was  with  the  Serbs  merely  a  question  of  admitting  whether  or  no  the 
inhabitants  of  Uskub  and  Tetovo  were  Macedonians.  That  could  have 
been  established  easily  enough,  and  none  could  have  done  it  better  than 
the  Russians.  After  all  it  is  no  insuperable  task  to  establish  the  identity 
of  the  inhabitants  of  two  districts.  But  the  Russians,  favoring  the  Serbs, 
did  not  want  to  know  whether  the  people  of  Uskub  and  Tetovo  were 
Macedonians  or  Serbo^Croats.  It  was  their  intention  that  Serbia  should 
keep  all  of  Macedonia,  if  at  all  possible,  and  Sazonoff  saw  to  it,  in  spite 
of  a  rather  active  and  well-directed  opposition  of  the  Austro-Hungarians, 
that  Serbia  received  all  she  wanted.  Mention  must  be  made  here  of  the 
fact  that  Germany  was  still  playing  the  game  of  Russia  and  opposed  her 
ally,  Austria-Hungary. 

Sazonoff  also  wished  to  be  on  good  terms  with  the  Greeks,  and  for 
that  reason  his  delegates  opposed  the  annexation  by  Bulgaria  of  Seres, 
Drama  and  Cavalla,  being  backed  in  this  instance  by  the  protests  of  nearly 
the  entire  convention,  and  again  by  the  Germans,  who  felt  that  something 
had  to  be  left  to  the  brother-in-law  of  Emperor  William.  Nor  was  the 
Bulgarian  claim  any  too  strong  inherently.  The  Greek  population  east 
of  the  Struma  is  fairly  numerous,  and  to  merely  barter  people  from  one 
government  to  another  does  not  make  for  peace.  What  the  exact  proportion 
of  Greek  to  genuine  Bulgar  in  those  parts  is  I  am  not  prepared  to  say 
for  the  reason  that  I  do  not  know. 

That  Russia  should  object  to  the  annexation  of  all  of  Thrace,  as 
far  as  the  Tchataldja  line  for  fortifications,  to  the  very  gates  of  Constan- 
tinople, figuratively,  was  very  natural.  Had  the  Bulgarians  been  cautious 
enough  not  to  include  the  ports  of  Gallipoli,  on  the  peninsula,  Rodosto  and 
Silivria,  the  entire  Marmoran  shore  of  Thrace,  in  fact,  into  their  terms, 
prospects  might  have  been  better,  even  though  a  city  like  Adrianople, 
founded  by  Hadrian  of  Rome,  and  elevated  to  the  dignity  of  capital  by 
the  Osmanli,  was  to  be  snatched  away  from  the  Turks.  Upon  what 
ethnological  basis  the  Bulgars  rested  this  demand  I  fail  to  see.  After  all 
not  everything  in  Thrace  was  or  is  Bulgarian.  Long  before  the  annexa- 
tionists of  Sofia  were  thought  of,  Thrakian,  Hellene,  Macedonian,  Roman, 
Byzantine  and  Turk  had  labored  there,  built  the  city,  plowed  the  fields 
and  raised  children,  whose  descendants  can  not  have  as  completely  dis- 
appeared as  the  Bulgarians  would  have  us  believe. 


164  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

But  the  amputation  of  Dobrudja  was  a  crime.  The  Rumanian  govern- 
ment, when  the  Balkan  war  was  not  yet  weeks  old,  gave  the  Bulgarian 
government  to  understand  that  for  the  purpose  of  bettering  communication 
with  a  Rumanian  port  on  the  Black  Sea,  it  wished  to  enter  into  negotiations 
of  a  boundary-rectification  character.  When  in  the  Balkan  they  speak  of  such 
a  thing,  war  is  never  far  oflF.  Bulgaria  paid  little  attention  to  the  request, 
but  when  the  falling-out  between  the  Serbs  and  Bulgars  was  there, 
Rumania  promptly  took  what  she  wanted  and  a  little  more,  of  course — on 
the  plea,  made  afterwards,  that  in  the  Dobrudja  there  were  Vlakhs  who 
had  fared  poorly  under  the  Bulgarian  government.  There  were  some 
600,000  other  Vlakhs,  the  Kutzos,  further  down  in  the  Balkans,  where 
the  frontiers  of  Serbia,  Greece  and  Albania  meet,  who  needed  such  solici- 
tude much  more.  But  for  these  Rumania  did  not  speak.  Serbia,  on  the 
other  hand,  made  no  mention  of  the  Bulgars — ^the  Shapes — that  had  been 
traded  to  her  by  the  transfer  of  Pirot  and  Vranya,  in  1878,  in  exchange 
for  Novipasar,  which  the  Peace  treaty  of  San  Stefano  had  promised 
Serbia. 

Bucharest  Treaty  a  Mare's  Nest 

It  is  not  surprising  that  this  shabby  deal,  for  which  SazonoflF  was 
wholly  responsible,  did  not  increase  in  the  Bulgarian  his  love  of  Russia. 
The  Treaty  of  Bucharest  made  a  bad  dent  in  the  old  superstition  of  the 
Bulgarian  peasant  that  a  bullet  fired  at  a  Russian  by  a  Bulgarian,  or  vice 
versa,  would  never  find  its  mark.  Bulgaria  really  had  a  democratic  and 
fully  representative  government — liberal  thought  and  institutions — that 
even  went  so  far  as  to  make  the  national  legislature,  the  Sobranye,  a  single 
body,  with  no  senate  to  interfere  with  the  acts  of  the  people's  delegates. 
Virtually  every  able-bodied  man  in  the  country  had  been  in  the  field  against 
the  Turks,  and,  now  that  the  fruits  of  victory  were  being  snatched  away 
from  Bulgaria,  everywhere  the  question  was  asked  why  this  should  be 
so.  M.  I.  E.  Guechoflf,  who  had  been  the  first  premier  during  the  Balkan 
War,  as  the  head  of  a  coalition  government  composed  chiefly  of  the 
Nationalist  and  Progressive  parties,  had  to  retire  in  favor  of  Dr.  Daneflf, 
who  at  the  next  election  was  succeeded  by  Dr.  RadoslavoflF,  heading  the 
Liberal,  National  Liberal  and  Young  Liberal  parties.  General  SavoflF,  the 
able  Bulgarian  officer,  of  whom  so  much  was  heard  during  the  Balkan 
War,  was  relegated  for  having  attacked  the  Serb  army  on  the  night  of 
July  29th,  1913,  without  waiting  for  a  formal  declaration  of  war,  and  the 
Russophile  element,  generally,  was  driven  out  of  office. 

But  of  adherents  to  Russia  there  was  no  great  dearth  even  then.  Dr. 
RadoslavoflF,  to  be  sure,  maintained  his  position,  often  by  the  weirdest 
of  political  moves,  but  he  had  a  hard  time  keeping  his  coalition  together. 


BUCHAREST  TREATY  A  MARE'S  NEST  165 

It  was  composed,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  between  the  Triple  Entente 
and  the  Central  Powers,  of  the  parties  above  named,  and  of  such  mug- 
womps,  political  freebooters,  and  patronage-takers  as  he  could  attract  and 
manage.  These  came  from  every  one  of  the  other  parties  in  Bulgaria, 
to  wit :  Nationalists,  still  under  M.  Guechoff ;  Progressives,  under  Theodor 
Theodoroff;  Democrats,  under  Alexander  Malinofif;  Agrarians,  under 
Stambulowski ;  Radicals  and  Socialists.  Political  opinions  varied  from 
the  statement  of  Dr.  Daneff,  who  was  in  the  Guechoff  cabinet  during  the 
Balkan  War  and  later  premier,  that: 

"With  Russia  we  Bulgarians  do  not  practice  politics,"  meaning  that 
the  Bulgarians  were  one  with  the  Russians,  to  the  attitude  of  Ivan 
Momtschiloflf,  vice-president  of  the  Sobranje,  who  from  the  very  first  was 
the  most  ardent  of  the  Germanophiles. 

To  keep  these  extremes  within  the  bounds  prescribed  by  the  neutrality 
proclaimed  by  the  Bulgarian  government  when  war  broke  out  was  no  easy 
task.     Dr.  Radoslavoff  had  his  hands  full. 

Such  was  the  situation  when  in  February  of  1915,  I  called  upon  the 
Bulgarian  premier.  I  had  spent  some  time  in  Bucharest,  and  watched 
political  intrigue  there.  The  efforts  that  were  being  made  with  money 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  that  flowed  in  streams,  were  only  too  strong 
an  indication  that  soon  or  late  the  war  between  the  Central  Powers  and 
the  Triple  Entente  would  spread  into  other  parts. 

I  found  Dr.  Radoslavoff  well  in  control,  not  only  of  the  government 
but  also  the  relations  with  Rumania,  and  above  all,  Serbia.  He  seemed 
to  be  a  man  whom  nothing  perturbed  easily,  as  was  shown  when  toward 
the  end  of  the  interview  we  came  to  discussing  the  matter  of  Macedonia. 
The  premier  said  that  since  the  control  of  Macedonia  by  Serbia  some 
300,000  Macedonians  had  come  to  Bulgaria.  These  people  were  welcome, 
of  course,  he  added,  but  the  trouble  was  that  they  were  a  great  charge  upon 
a  population  numbering  only  about  five  millions  and  none  too  well  off 
in  the  first  place. 

Dr.  Radoslavoff  proceeded  to  give  me  the  details  of  this  problem.  It 
appears  that  the  Serbian  officials  did  everything  possible  to  encourage 
emigration  from  Macedonia,  and  their  program  included  such  things  as 
torture  and  murder,  arson  and  rape,  said  the  premier.  The  closing  of 
schools  and  churches,  the  banishment  of  teachers  and  priests,  and  dis- 
crimination of  an  economic  and  political  character  were  quite  the  least 
incidents  in  the  plan  of  persecution  which  the  Serb  government  was  carry- 
ing out.  Great  stress  was  laid  by  the  premier  upon  the  fact  that  the 
Bulgars  and  Macedonians  were  "brothers"  in  everything  two  peoples  can 
have  in  common,  and  that  on  this  account  the  burden  of  Macedonian 
immigration  would  be  borne,  so  long  as  possible.    It  could  not  be  borne 


166  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

for  always,  however.    On  that  point,  Dr.  Radoslavoff  was  so  final  that 
I  began  to  take  notice. 

I  asked  him  what  steps  the  Bulgarian  government  had  taken  in  regard 
to  the  matter.  Dr.  Radoslavoff  replied  that  he  had  instructed  his  diplomatic 
representatives  abroad  to  bring  the  conduct  of  the  Serbian  government  in 
Macedonia  to  the  attention  of  the  Powers.  But  he  feared,  and  rightly  so, 
that  for  the  time  being  the  Powers  were  too  busy  making  war  to  do 
much,  if  anything. 

H<yw  Bulgarian  Officers  Viewed  It 

The  same  evening  I  attended  a  ball  at  the  Officers'  Casino,  given  in 
honor  of  King  Ferdinand  and  his  family.  Their  Majesties  failing  to 
appear,  and  with  the  ball  room  terribly  crowded,  I  repaired  with  Dr. 
Acene  C.  Kermecktchieff,  the  United  States  consular  agent  at  Sofia,  to 
the  dining  room  in  the  basement  of  the  clubhouse.  Dr.  Kermecktchieff,  I 
wish  to  state  was  then  the  sole  and  single  United  States  resident  diplomatic 
and  consular  officer  in  all  of  Bulgaria,  despite  the  fact  that  the  Bulgarian 
government  had  some  time  before  sent  to  Washington,  in  the  person  of 
Stephen  Panaretoff,  an  "envoy  extraordinary  and  minister  plenipotentiary," 
whose  United  States  equal,  Mr.  Charles  J.  Vopicka,  at  Bucharest,  attended 
to  American  diplomatic  representation  in  Rumania,  Serbia  and  Bulgaria. 

Dr.  Kermecktchieff  was  a  Bulgarian  citizen,  of  course,  and  lived 
largely  by  his  pen,  not  the  most  profitable  way  of  making  a  living  in  the 
Balkans.  As  a  writer  and  speaker  he  had  to  be  politically  affiliated,  which 
he  did  by  joining  the  Radoslavoff  group  of  parties  and  leaders.  The  result 
was  that  later  he  was  dismissed  from  the  United  States  consular  service 
on  the  charge  of  pro-Germanism.  The  case  is  illuminating,  since  it  hap- 
pened in  the  summer  of  1915,  and  to  the  citizen  of  another  country,  whose 
sole  compensation  for  his  service  as  consular  agent  had  in  that  year  been 
a  matter  of  two  dollars,  as  I  recall  it. 

The  American  consular  agent  introduced  me  to  a  number  of  officer 
friends  of  his,  and  before  long  the  party  was  discussing  the  European 
situation,  from  which  I  gathered  that  all  those  present  were  thoroughly 
anti-Russian  and  Serbophobe.  They  wished  to  see  Russia  beaten  to  her 
knees,  and  hoped  that  before  the  War  was  over  they  would  have  another 
chance  at  the  Serbs.  There  was  no  bravado  about  the  remarks  that  were 
made.  When  I  inquired  where  I  might  find  traces  of  the  great  Russo- 
philism  I  had  heard  so  much  of  in  Bucharest,  one  of  the  officers,  a  grizzled 
veteran  of  a  colonel,  replied  facetiously  that  in  the  house  across  the  street, 
referring  to  the  residence  of  M.  Ouechoff,  I  could  be  accommodated. 

"Sir,"  he  continued.   "We  are  bound  to  get  into  this  war.   There  is  on 


HOW  BULGARIAN  OFFICERS  VIEWED  IT.  167 

the  Balkan  not  enough  room  for  Bulgar  and  Serb.  One  of  us  has  to  go 
under.     So  far  as  I  am  concerned  it  will  be  the  Serb." 

There  was  something  decidedly  savage  in  these  words. 

Until  early  in  the  morning  I  was  entertained  by  what  the  Bulgarian 
army  thought  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  and  every  other  word,  almost, 
was  a  vow  that  there  would  be  a  reckoning,  and  no  pleasant  one. 

On  the  following  day  I  was  in  one  of  the  large  rooms  of  the  club 
for  the  purpose  of  seeing  a  life-size  portrait  of  Alexander  II,  which  he 
had  donated  to  the  club  many  years  ago.  I  noticed  that  the  officers  who 
had  entertained  me  at  luncheon  spoke  of  the  Czar  Liberator  with  the 
greatest  respect  and  devotion.  Suddenly  one  of  them  faced  about  to  look 
at  a  picture  of  Czar  Nicholas  II,  on  the  opposite  wall. 

"We  will  turn  that  thing  upside  down  one  of  these  days,"  he  said 
tersely.  "He  is  the  man  who  deserted  us  and  gave  our  victory  over  the 
Turks  to  the  Serbs  and  the  Rumanians." 

A  few  days  later  I  met  Mr.  Guechoff.  My  discussion  with  him  left 
no  room  for  doubt  that  he  was  ardently  in  favor  of  the  Russians.  He 
hoped  that  the  remnants  of  the  Narew  Army  would  be  assembled  in  proper 
time,  and  General  Rennenkampf  dismissed,  in  order  that  Russia  might  make 
good  her  losses  in  the  Masurian  Lakes.  A  tea  at  the  house  of  the 
court  physician  of  Ferdinand  resulted  in  the  information  that  Bulgaria 
would  not  remain  neutral  for  long,  if  nothing  was  done  by  the  Serbian 
government  to  check  the  conduct  of  its  officials  in  Macedonia.  All  in  all 
I  left  for  Constantinople  with  the  impression  that  Bulgaria,  if  at  all  entering 
the  European  War,  would  do  it  on  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers.  I 
also  surmised  that  Count  Tarnow  von  Tarnowski,  the  Austro-Hungarian 
minister  at  Sofia,  and  Herr  Michaelis,  the  German  minister,  would  not 
have  so  hard  a  time  of  it  when  the  crucial  moment  came. 

When  next  I  was  in  Sofia  it  was  plain  that  Bulgaria,  like  Turkey, 
would  enter  the  War  on  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers,  for  the  purpose 
of  mending  her  fences  against  her  neighbors.  The  agreement  with  the 
Ottoman  government,  concerning  the  border  rectification  along  the  Maritza 
river  and  north  of  Adrianople  had  been  reached  and  the  public  was  about 
to  hear  of  it,  as  a  notice,  in  the  opinion  of  those  who  did  not  know  any 
better,  to  the  Entente  governments  that  Turk  and  Bulgar  were  about  to 
correct  the  miscarriage  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest. 

By  that  time  I  had  become  familiar  enough  with  afifairs  on  the 
Balkan  to  know  that  nothing  could  keep  Bulgaria  out  of  the  camp  of 
Germany,  Austria-Hungary  and  Turkey.  In  the  first  place  no  government 
will  cede  territory  to  another,  when  there  is  still  room  for  the  fear  that 
the  other  may  go  to  war  against  one's  ally,  Austria-Hungary,  in  this  case ; 
in  the  second  instance,  the  Bulgarian  demands  upon  Serbia  were  such 


168  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

that  her  government,  with  the  best  intentions  in  the  world,  could  not 
accept  them.  What  Bulgaria  demanded  was  virtually  a  surrender  of  what 
the  Serbian  government  had  garnered  at  the  end  of  the  Balkan  War. 
Though  Serbia  was  about  to  be  hard  pressed  by  the  Austro-Hungarians 
and  Germans,  her  government  could  not  meet  the  wishes  of  Sofia. 

Of  course,  the  Russophiles  in  the  country  had  not  been  idle,  it  was 
claimed.  A  bomb  was  thrown  in  the  Citizens*  Casino  of  Sofia,  in  the  park 
across  from  the  royal  residence.  It  was  a  most  dastardly  business,  since 
the  persons  killed  were  innocent  merrymakers  at  a  ball.  None  of  them 
was  of  political  importance  or  influence,  nor  was  there  anybody  near  for 
whom  the  bomb  might  have  been  intended.  Rumors  about  town  had  it 
that  the  Russophiles  had  thrown  the  bomb  as  a  signal  for  an  uprising  against 
the  Radoslavoff  government,  and  the  Germanophiles  were  charged  with  a 
conspiracy  to  bring  about  a  state  that  would  lead  to  the  imposing  of 
martial  law  upon  the  city,  so  that  the  government  of  Radoslavoff  could 
not  be  embarrassed,  and  possibly  removed,  by  losing  a  vote  of  confidence 
in  the  Sobranje.  These  stories  had  a  certain  amount  of  color,  though  no 
substance,  to  them,  as  I  could  ascertain.  At  any  rate  the  crime  was  never 
sifted  to  the  bottom. 


Elntente  Diplomacy  at  Sofia  Bestirs  Itself 

As  yet  the  courting  of  Bulgaria  was  still  going  on  in  secret,  nor  was 
the  wooing  very  ardent.  Messrs.  Guechoff  and  Daneff  were  making  as- 
surances to  the  Entente  representatives  that  went  far  beyond  their  power, 
with  Mr.  Daneff  doing  a  good  business  buying  and  exporting  wheat  for 
the  French  government,  for  which  he  afterwards  was  sentenced  to  a  term 
of  imprisonment  for  alleged  irregularities.  Count  Tarnowski  was  rather 
busy  promoting  the  cause  of  his  country  and  her  ally,  and  later  his 
Foreign  Office  in  Vienna  made  a  great  deal  of  his  efforts,  all  of  which  was 
buncombe,  because  the  man  who  could  sway  or  influence  Dr.  Radoslavoff 
was  not  then  in  Sofia  nor  in  any  manner  connected  with  the  affairs  of 
the  Central  Powers.  The  Bulgarian  premier,  as  I  established  to  at  least 
my  own  satisfaction,  was  a  man  with  a  mind  all  his  own.  But  ministries 
of  foreign  affairs  must  now  and  then  point  to  one  of  their  diplomatists 
with  pride  in  order  to  let  the  populace  know  that  the  government  is 
efficient  in  diplomacy. 

The  fact  is  that  the  case  of  Bulgaria  was  all  fixed,  pre-determined  by 
the  laws  of  national  biology — ^the  trend  of  events.  Dr.  Radoslavoff  was 
biding  his  time.    That  was  all. 

Among  Englishmen  who  realized  this  were  the  Buxton  Brothers,  who 
probably  were  better  informed  on  Balkan  affairs,  if  I  am  to  judge  by 


ENTENTE  DIPLOMACY  AT  SOFIA  BESTIRS  ITSELF      169 

their  publications,  than  any  other  person  of  influence  in  the  British  govern- 
ment. There  used  to  be  an  element  in  journalism  that  found  much  pleasure 
in  looking  upon  itself  as  Balkan  "experts."  The  class  to  which  I  refer 
had  a  great  deal  to  say  just  then.  What  they  said  was  not  worth  the 
ink  used  in  bringing  it  to  the  attention  of  a  gullible  and  trusting  public. 

M.  Guechoff,  however,  was  taking  a  very  intelligent  interest  in  the 
general  aspect  of  things,  differing  from  some  other  statesmen  in  so  far 
that  he  was  withal  not  incautious.  When  I  arrived  in  Sofia,  he  sent  me 
an  invitation  to  have  tea  with  him. 

I  expected  to  find  a  tea  aux  dames,  naturally.  Instead  there  was 
another  man,  the  Bulgarian  general  who  had  been  in  charge  of  the  engineer- 
ing phase  of  the  siege  of  Adrianople.  My  host  was  perfectly  frank  about 
the  invitation  and  the  company.  He  said  that  he  did  not  know  very  much 
of  military  aflfairs,  but  was  keenly  interested  in  the  state  of  affairs  on 
Gallipoli  peninsula.  Would  I  be  kind  enough  to  give  the  general  the 
benefit  of  my  information? 

I  had  been  given  a  laissez-passer  by  Mr.  Koulocheff,  the  Bulgarian 
minister  at  Constantinople,  who  in  that  manner  had  learned  that  I  intended 
going  to  Sofia.  I  suspect  that  he  had  tipped  off  his  friend,  M.  Guechoff. 
A  remark  made  by  the  former  premier  presently  confirmed  my  suspicion. 

The  general  and  Mr.  Guechoff  were  delightfully  frank  in  their  ques- 
tions and  their  own  remarks.  But  they  would  not  believe  what  they  heard. 
They  were  polite  about  it,  of  course,  but  on  the  whole  exasperatingly 
skeptical,  if  that  be  the  term.  I  had  spent  weeks  and  weeks  with  the 
Ottoman  troops  on  Gallipoli,  and  was  objective  in  the  manner  which  some 
military  training  and  responsibility  are  apt  to  instil  into  a  man.  Was  I  not 
mistaken  about  the  chances  of  the  Turks  holding  out  on  the  peninsula? 
How  was  it  possible  that  the  Turkish  army  which  had  done  so  poorly  during 
the  Balkan  War  could  of  a  sudden,  almost  overnight,  show  such  grit  and 
ability  ? 

When  a  former  premier  speaks  in  that  fashion  of  an  army  against 
whom  he  ordered  a  mobilization,  it  must  be  taken  for  granted  that  the 
man  is  sincere.  I  made  some  such  remark,  and  then  capped  the  climax  by 
telling  M.  Guechoff  and  the  other  guest  that  before  the  coming  winter  was 
over  there  would  be  no  more  Allied  troops  at  the  gates  of  Constantinople. 
For  a  while  that  stunned  the  old  soldier.  When  he  had  recovered,  he 
renewed  his  cross-examination  of  me.  The  result  was  that  we  parted  the 
best  of  friends  late  that  afternoon,  with  the  General  and  Mr.  Guechoff 
absolutely  where  they  had  been  before,  which  was  their  privilege,  of  course. 
Meanwhile,  I  had  become  acquainted  at  the  Russian  legation,  where 
much  talk  was  being  let  off  the  stocks  in  regard  to  the  rank  ingratitude  of 
the  Bulgarian  government.    The  liberation  of  Bulgaria  by  Czar  Alexander 


i;^  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Oswoboditel  was  much  exploited,  but  nothing  was  said  concerning  the 
attitude  toward  the  foundling  on  the  Balkan  of  Alexander  III  and  Nicholas 
II.  Now  and  then  I  would  get  in  a  word  regarding  more  recent  events, 
to  get  the  stout  assurance  that  Russia  had  never  favored  the  Serbs  at 
the  expense  of  the  Bulgars.  At  the  other  Entente  legations  they  held 
similar  views — all  of  them  empty  protests  in  the  light  of  what  actually 
occured. 

Mr.  O'Beirne,  British  charge  d'affaires,  and  formerly  conscillcr  of  the 
British  embassy  at  Petrograd,  seemed  to  be  the  only  diplomatist  of  his 
camp  who  was  inclined  to  take  a  rational  estimate  of  the  situation.  He 
was  not  hopeful  from  the  very  start  of  the  negotiations  and  did  his 
packing  early.  There  were  men  in  London  who  were  of  a  diflFerent  mind. 
Sir  Henry  G.  O.  Bax-Ironside,  the  British  minister,  had  been  asked 
home  by  them,  to  make  room  for  a  man  who  was  supposed  to  be  of 
greater  ability  and  well  versed  with  conditions  in  Petrograd,  Mr.  O'Beirne. 
He  answered  to  both  specifications.  Being  an  able  man  he  did  not  fool 
himself,  as  he  once  expressed  it  to  me,  without  referring  to  himself,  of 
course.  His  French  colleague,  however,  was  a  man  who  seemed  to  think 
that  if  one  talks  long  enough  on  a  subject  it  will  in  the  end  turn  out  in 
accord  with  one's  wishes.  He  mistook  his  "desires"  for  reality.  Mons. 
M.  A.  de  Panafieu  also  subscribed  to  the  fine  habit  of  telling  his  doorman 
that  he  was  not  in,  within  hearing  of  the  caller,  when  there  was  some  nasty 
turn  in  diplomacy  to  be  explained.  The  Italian  minister,  on  the  other 
hand,  lived  in  fear  and  trembling  of  the  moment  when  he  should  get  his 
passports.     Ultimately,  he  was  the  first  who  was  all  packed  up. 

Dr.  Radoslavoff's  Diplomatic  Notions 

Soon  the  diplomatic  whirligig  was  in  full  swing.  The  governments  in 
London,  Petrograd  and  Paris  wanted  to  know  where  Bulgaria  stood. 
Dr.  Radoslavoff  announced  that  he  did  not  know  that  himself  in  view 
of  the  spoliation  carried  through  by  means  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest. 
That  was  a  disconcerting  answer,  for  which  the  Entente  governments  were 
Mot  wholly  prepared.  They  had  in  this  instance  taken  contact  with  a  man 
who  knew  exactly  what  he  wanted  and  what  he  had  to  do. 

The  attitude  of  the  Bulgarian  premier  was  in  all  respects  the  counter- 
part of  President  Paul  Kruger,  when  he  measured  words  with  Lord  Milner 
at  Bloemfontein,  in  1899,  and  told  the  representative  of  Great  Britain 
that  all  diplomatists  were  what  King  David  had  said  of  all  men.  Dr. 
Radoslavoflf  was  the  most  refreshing  opposite  of  the  schemer  I  have  ever 
met,  and  since  I  met  him  often  I  attach  some  importance  to  that  opinion. 
He  was  always  straightforward.     When  he  did  not  want  to  answer  a 


DR.  RADOSLAVOFF'S  DIPLOMATIC  NOTIONS         171 

question,  he  said  as  much,  and  circumlocution  with  an  ulterior  motive 
tried  his  patience  sorely,  as  I  discovered  several  times  for  my  own  benefit. 

The  next  move  on  the  part  of  the  Entente  governments  was  to  ask 
what  Dr.  Radoslavoff  would  take  for  agreeing  not  to  molest  Serbia  while 
she  was  being  pressed  by  the  Austro-Hungarians  and  Germans,  who  were 
already  on  the  verge  to  swoop  down  upon  her,  under  the  leadership  of 
Field  Marshal  Mackensen. 

The  reply  was  Radoslavovianly  frank.  The  Bulgarian  government 
wanted  all  that  which  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest  had  deprived  her  off. 

Of  course,  that  was  a  large  contract  to  fill.  It  meant  also  taking  from 
the  Rumanians  the  Dobrudja.  The  Rumanians  were  being  belabored 
night  and  day  to  join  the  Entente;  how  could  they  be  asked  to  disgorge 
what  Sazonoff  and  the  remainder  of  Europe's  concert  had  given  them 
in  order  that  Bulgaria  might  be  humbled  into  the  dust  ?  That  part  of  the 
demands  the  Entente  governments  would  have  to  think  over,  said  their 
diplomatists  in  Sofia.  Would  Bulgaria  look  upon  Thrace  as  far  as  the 
Enos-Media  line  as  a  sort  of  compensation  until  the  Dobrudja  matter 
could  be  looked  into  with  more  leisure? 

Dr.  Radoslavoff  knew  that  the  same  line  was  already  the  future 
Russian  boundary  in  Thrace,  and  said  that  according  with  the  agreement 
just  made  with  the  Turks,  in  regard  to  the  rectification  of  the  border, 
Bulgaria  had  no  further  intentions  in  that  direction,  being  fully  satisfied 
with  having  added  to  the  kingdom  the  railroad  line  Swilengrad-Dimotika, 
all  territory  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Maritza,  and  the  northern  hill  country 
of  Thrace. 

Bulgaria  wanted  to  have  the  case  of  Seres,  Drama  and  Cavalla  re- 
opened. That,  too,  was  difficult  since  Venizelos  was  working  hard  for 
the  Entente.  The  re-opening  of  that  sore  point  would  have  surely  driven 
Venizelos  into  hiding  and  Greece  into  the  arms  of  the  Central  Powers. 

It  came  to  be  Serbia's  turn.  Dr.  Radoslavoff  said  that  the  Bulgarian 
people,  and  they  were  as  one  man  behind  him  in  this  matter,  wanted 
Macedonia,  and  without  strings  attached  to  its  transfer. 

The  Entente  governments  let  it  be  known  through  their  agents  in 
Sofia  that  they  could  not  think  of  presenting  such  a  humiliating  proposi- 
tion to  their  ally,  Serbia.  Would  it  not  be  well  to  make  at  least  some 
of  the  claims  on  Macedonia  a  little  conditional ;  for  instance,  would  the 
Bulgarian  people  not  be  satisfied  with  getting  the  southern  parts  of  the 
district — zone  incontestee — now,  and  the  northern,  Uskub  and  Tetovo, 
later  on.  Of  course,  the  transfer  could  not  be  an  absolutely  final  one. 
While  Southern  Macedonia  would  be  ceded  immediately,  and  might  be 
taken  in  hand  by  a  civil  administration. of  the  Bulgarians  and  Macedonians, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  keep  the  district  under  military  control  by  the 


172  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Allied  governments,  to  please  the  Serbians  and  the  Italians.  As  to  Uskub 
and  Tetovo — these  two  districts  would  be  given  to  Bulgaria  with  the 
making  of  peace. 

With  this  counter  proposal  Dr.  Radoslavoff  and  his  cabinet,  such  men 
as  Major  General  Jekoff,  minister  of  war;  Pesheff,  minister  of  public 
instruction ;  TontcheflF,  minister  of  finance ;  Ghenadieff,  minister  of  public 
works,  and  others  were  not  satisfied. 

Negotiations  reached  the  argumentative  stage.  The  Bulgarian  govern- 
ment pointed  out  that  while  it  was  actuated  entirely  in  its  demands  by 
an  insistence  upon  what  was  a  right  of  the  Bulgarian  and  Macedonian 
peoples,  it  would  also  have  to  look  into  the  future.  Serbia  had  been  promised 
so  much  by  the  Entente  governments  that  Bulgaria,  no  matter  how 
considerate  of  her  neighbor  in  the  West,  could  not  overlook  that  the 
incorporation  with  Serbia  of  about  17,000,000  Slavs  in  Bosnia,  Herzegovina, 
much  of  Dalmatia,  Slovenia,  the  Banat  of  Hungary,  and  Carinthia  would 
badly  upset  the  balance  of  power  on  the  Balkan — as  it  really  would  have 
done,  especially  since  the  propaganda  of  the  Serbs  in  favor  of  Jugo- 
slavia had  totally  excluded  the  Bulgarians  as  being  Slavs  at  all.  Of  a 
sudden  the  Bulgarians,  who  in  the  past  had  been  the  very  children  of 
Russia,  were  being  labelled  all  over  as  Tartars,  and  half -Turks,  arch- 
Turanians  and  what  not.  To  men  of  the  Radoslavoff  type,  who  know 
what  that  means,  this  was  the  signal  that  before  long  somebody  would 
remember  that  the  Huns  had  actually  at  one  time  inhabited  Bulgaria. 
Some  savant  would  make  some  cephalic  measurements  and  prove  it, 
moreover. 

Question  of  Guarantee  Leads  to  a  Deadlock 

An  endless  wrangling  resulted.  The  intermediate  solutions  of  the 
problem  that  were  proposed  need  not  occupy  us  here.  All  negotiating 
came  in  the  end  to  this :  The  Entente  governments  would  guarantee  that 
in  case  of  a  successful  ending  of  the  European  War,  Bulgaria  would  get 
what  she  wanted  of  Serbia.  To  enter  at  all  upon  the  Dobrudja  question 
was  not  feasible  just  then,  though  some  steps  would  be  taken  as  time 
permitted.  The  matter  of  Seres,  Drama  and  Cavalla  was  to  be  taken 
in  hand  later  also.  Everything  depended,  however,  on  whether  or  no 
Austria-Hungary  could  be  separated  in  the  end  from  the  Banat,  Slovenia, 
Carinthia,  Herzegovina,  Bosnia  and  Dalmatia. 

The  Bulgarian  government  wanted  to  be  specifically  informed  what 
under  these  circumstances  the  values  of  the  guarantees  offered  would  be. 
That  was  a  difficult  question  to  answer.  The  Serbian  government  was 
not  inclined  to  give  up  Macedonia  without  getting  hold  of  the  Austro- 


QUESTION  O^  GUARANTEE  LEADS  TO  DEADLOCK  173 

Hungarian  provinces  and  crownlands  first,  and  said  as  much  with  a  candor 
that  was  the  only  refreshing  aspect  of  the  entire  proceeding,  so  far  as  the 
Entente  was  concerned. 

Thus  a  deadlock  had  been  reached.  Meanwhile  Mackensen  was  getting 
ready,  and  a  military  convention  had  been  entered  into  between  Bulgaria 
and  the  Central  Powers.  Colonel  Ewald  von  Massow,  the  German  military 
plenipotentiary  at  Sofia,  had  already  taken  possession,  for  office  purposes, 
of  a  large  building  that  was  to  be  a  hotel  for  the  Companie  internationale 
des  wagon-lits,  and  the  coming  event  generally  was  casting  large  and  dark 
shadows  ahead. 

Mr.  Guechoff,  of  the  Nationalists,  was  moving  heaven  and  earth 
to  keep  Bulgaria  out  of  the  war,  in  which  effort  he  was  not  entirely 
unsuccessful,  since  his  party  included  what  capitalists  there  are  in  Bulgaria ; 
Malinoff,  leader  of  the  Democrats,  was  doing  his  best  also,  and  the  Pro- 
gressives were  not  lagging.  The  Agrarians,  especially,  were  violently 
opposed  to  another  war,  as  were  the  Radicals  and  Socialists,  who  in  the 
Sofia  cafes  kept  things  in  pandemonium. 

A  delegation  of  Agrarians,  Radicals  and  Socialists  decided  to  bring 
the  matter  to  the  attention  of  Czar  Ferdinand  one  morning,  about  ten 
o'clock,  just  before  the  bubble  of  diplomacy  burst.  I  had  just  visited 
M.  Dobrovitch,  the  private  secretary  of  the  king,  and  met  the  delegation 
in  the  large  foyer  of  the  palace.  There  was  grim  determination  on  their 
faces,  and  the  intention  to  be  heard  from.  Since  I  knew  what  the  purpose 
of  the  call  was,  I  naturally  made  it  my  business  to  be  on  hand  when 
the  delegation  left  the  palace.  The  faces  of  the  men  were  grimmer  yet, 
that  of  Stambulowski,  spokesman,  was  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  behold.  He 
was  furious  and  the  muscles  of  his  jaws  were  working  in  a  way  that 
showed  that  he  had  not  fared  so  well  with  His  Majesty. 

The  interview  was  a  very  unconventional  affair.  King  Ferdinand 
told  his  callers  that  the  government  was  in  the  hands  of  Dr.  Radoslavoff, 
and  that  all  he  had  been  asked  to  do  was  sign  the  decrees  of  the  cabinet, 
which  was  true  enough,  seeing  that  Ferdinand  was  mindful  of  the  fact 
that  he  had  taken  the  throne  of  a  man  whose  stay  in  Bulgaria  had  been 
made  impossible  because  he  was  thought  too  great  a  partizan  of  Russia. 
All  nonsense  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  Czar  Ferdinand  had  very 
little  to  do  with  the  decisions  of  the  Radoslavoff  government. 

Stambulowski  would  not  believe  that. 

"Thou,  king!"  he  shouted  as  loudly  as  he  could,  and  with  his  face 
red  with  rage,  "take  care  that  thou  dost  not  lose  thy  head  in  this  war." 

For  a  moment  King  Ferdinand  was  at  a  loss  what  to  say.  Then  he 
looked  at  his  son,  Prince  Boris,  and  calmly  replied: 

"I  will  take  care  of  my  head,  do  you  take  care  of  your  hide." 


174  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

That  ended  the  audience.  The  same  night  the  Bulgarian  cabinet  pre- 
pared the  call  to  the  people  for  the  mobilization. 

The  Entente  governments  were  now  reduced  to  playing  their  last 
card.  Bulgaria  was  about  to  enter  into  a  state  of  armed  neutrality,  and 
since  that  neutrality  could  be  directed  only  against  Serbia,  no  time  could 
be  lost  in  coming  to  a  decision  with  Bulgaria. 

On  October  3,  the  Russian  government  transmitted  to  the  Bulgarian 
government  the  following  note: 

"The  events  which  are  taking  place  in  Bulgaria  at  this 
moment  give  evidence  of  a  definite  decision  of  King  Ferdinand's 
Government  to  place  the  fate  of  its  country  in  the  hands  of  Ger- 
many. 

"The  presence  of  German  and  Austrian  officers  in  the 
Ministry  of  War  and  on  the  staff  of  the  army,  the  concentration 
of  troops  in  the  zone  bordering  Serbia,  and  the  extensive  financial 
support  accepted  from  our  enemies  by  the  Sofia  Cabinet,  no  longer 
leave  any  doubt  as  to  the  object  of  the  military  preparations  of 
Bulgaria. 

"The  Powers  of  the  Entente,  who  have  at  heart  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  aspirations  of  the  Bulgarian  people,  have,  on  many 
occasions,  warned  M.  Radoslavoff  that  any  hostile  act  against 
Serbia  would  be  considered  as  directed  against  themselves.  The 
assurances  given  by  the  head  of  the  Bulgarian  cabinet  in  reply  to 
these  warnings  are  contradicted  by  the  facts. 

"The  representative  of  Russia,  which  is  bound  to  Bulgaria  by 
the  imperishable  memory  of  her  liberation  from  the  Turkish  yoke, 
cannot  sanction  by  his  presence  preparations  for  fratricidal  aggres- 
sion against  a  Slav  and  allied  people. 

"The  Russian  minister,  therefore,  has  received  orders  to 
leave  Bulgaria  with  all  the  staffs  of  the  Legation  and  Consulates 
if  the  Bulgarian  Government  does  not  within  twenty-four  hours 
break  with  the  enemies  of  the  Slav  cause  and  of  Russia,  and  does 
not  at  once  proceed  to  send  away  officers  belonging  to  the  armies 
of  States  which  are  at  war  with  the  Powers  of  the  Entente." 

It  was  the  tone  of  outraged  paternalism  of  the  note  which  offended 
the  Bulgarian  people  most — many  of  those  even  who  had  up  to  now  been 
staunch  Russophiles.  Nor  were  the  facts  in  the  case  at  all  agreeable  with 
this  handiwork  of  Sazonoff's.  That  the  Powers  of  the  Entente  had  had 
"at  heart  the  realization  of  the  aspirations  of  the  Bulgarian  people"  was 
hardly  true.  The  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  just  two  years  old,  was  a  monument 
to  that  fact.  With  almost  every  able-bodied  Bulgarian  a  soldier  during 
the  Balkan  War,  and  the  inter-ally  fighting  between  themselves  and  the 
Serbs  and  Greeks,  with  the  invasion  of  Bulgaria  by  Rumanian  soldiers 
still  a  memory  of  yesterday,  and  with  Bulgaria  deprived  of  the  fruits 
of  her  victory,  as  the  Bulgars  saw  it,  and  with  territory  taken  from  them 


QUESTION  OF  GUARANTEE  LEADS  TO  DEADLOCK  175 

in  the  Dobrudja  by  main  force,  this  Sazonoff  note  could  not  have  the 
desired  result. 

But  for  some  reason  Dr.  Radoslavoff  began  to  spar  for  a  little  more 
time.  Negotiations  were  dragged  past  this  contretemps.  Mackensen  was 
not  yet  ready  and  the  harvesting  of  crops  was  not  complete. 

One  evening,  as  I  was  about  to  go  to  dinner,  I  met  in  the  lobby 
of  the  Grand  Hotel  Bulgarie,  where  I  was  stopping,  two  German  aviation 
officers,  whose  appearance  suggested  that  they  had  just  stepped  out  of  the 
aeroplane.  I  noticed  that  the  two  men  were  being  taken  upstairs  in  a 
manner  that  reminded  me  of  being  hustled  out  of  the  way.  Out  in  the 
street  stood  an  automobile  of  the  Bulgarian  army,  and  just  as  I  stepped 
out  of  doors  the  machine  sped  off.  I  noticed,  however,  that  an  orderly 
was  folding  up  two  Bulgarian  army  coats,  which,  as  I  surmised,  had 
been  worn  by  the  German  officers  to  ward  off  detection.  The  two  men 
did  not  appear  in  the  dining  room,  and  later  I  learned  that  they  had  dined 
in  their  quarters.  Next  morning  they  were  taken  to  the  Sofia  aviation  field 
in  the  same  machine,  but  without  wearing  the  great  coats.  On  the  aviation 
field  they  leisurely  got  into  their  flyer  and  made  off. 

That  afternoon  I  learned  that  the  two  aviators  had  come  to  Sofia  from 
the  Headquarters  of  Field  Marshal  Mackensen  at  Temesvar  in  Hungary. 
Two  days  later  the  German-Austro-Hungarian  offensive  against  the  Serbs 
was  on,  and  on  October  13th  occurred,  as  is  alleged  by  the  Bulgarian 
general  staff,  the  border  incident  which  caused  the  Bulgarian  government 
to  declare  that  a  state  of  war  existed  between  Bulgaria  and  Serbia.  I 
for  one  do  not  believe  that  the  Serbs  were  the  provocators.  There  are 
some  cases  in  which  cause  and  effect  show  a  relationship  that  is  more 
convincing  than  the  asseverations  of  any  government,  big  or  little.  What 
is  more  likely  is  that  the  Bulgars  acted  in  the  role  of  aggressor.  What 
is  just  as  likely  is  that  the  incident  in  question  did  not  occur  at  all. 

The  statement  given  me  by  the  Bulgarian  foreign  office  was  a  little 
too  "fishy"  as  the  saying  goes,  to  merit  attention  and  for  that  reason  I 
did  not  go  to  the  trouble  of  dispatching  it  to  my  news  service — which 
was  something  some  people  in  Sofia  could  not  forget,  and  which,  I  fear, 
had  something  to  do  with  my  attempted  explusion  from  the  country  by 
M.  Georgieff,  head  of  the  Bulgarian  political  police,  later  on. 

That  a  newspaper  correspondent  may  see  the  right  and  wrong  of  a 
thing  without  being  committed  thereby  to  becoming  partizan  is  some- 
thing which  few  government  officials  ever  concede.  It  was  so  in  Sofia, 
of  course. 

This  is  the  manner  in  which  diplomacy  failed  to  accomplish  anything 
whatsoever  in  Sofia,  the  assertions  of  others  notwithstanding.  It  was 
very  foolish  of  the  Vienna  Foreign  Office  to  advertise  that  Count  Tarnowski 


176  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

had  brought  about  Bulgaria's  entry  into  the  European  War.  Such  is  not  the 
case.  Herr  MichaeHs,  the  German  minister,  moreover,  would  have  been 
the  last  person  to  influence  Dr.  RadoslavoflF.  That  he  had  something  to  do 
with  the  understanding  that  was  reached  in  regard  to  the  military  conven- 
tion is  a  fact,  of  course.  But  aside  from  that  he  was  a  good  diplomatist — 
a  diplomatist  of  the  very  best  type  in  fact.  He  was  that  in  so  far  that 
he  was  not  a  diplomatist  at  all.  Politics  and  war  were  not  his  forte.  He 
cared  for  neither,  and  was  afraid  of  both — was,  in  other  words,  a  dip- 
lomatist of  the  innocuous  kind.  He  was  this  to  such  an  extent  that  before 
long  he  was  recalled  in  favor  of  Count  Alfred  Oberndorflf,  who  was  almost 
as  good  as  Herr  Michaelis. 


X 

SOME  CASES  OF  DIPLOMANIA 

INTO  the  period  marked  by  the  events  described  in  the  preceding 
chapter  fall  a  number  of  cases  of  "diplomania"  that  require  special 
attention,  though  not  all  of  them  were  of  prime  importance.  The 
world,  literally,  had  become  war  mad.  When  governments  were  not 
foaming  at  the  mouth,  they  usually  had  their  hands  full  apologizing  for 
the  more  recent  faux  pas  that  had  been  made,  diplomatically  or  militarily. 
The  press  also  suffered  from  a  convulsion  of  passion.  In  Great  Britain 
Lord  Northcliffe  was  attending  to  the  government  with  a  will  and  con- 
siderable effect.  The  journalistic  politicians  of  France  were  running,  or 
thought  they  did,  much  of  the  War,  and  the  press  of  Central  Europe 
just  then  was  jubilant  that  finally  the  direct  route  between  Berlin  and 
Bagdad  was  open.  It  would  now  be  possible  to  rush  to  the  Dardanelles 
and  Gallipoli  all  the  materielle  that  was  needed — additional  troops,  if 
necessary. 

Driving  the  Serbs  from  the  Danube  had  first  opened  the  water  route 
to  Constantinople,  and  shortly  thereafter  the  rail  line  was  also  free.  To 
the  Central  Powers  that  meant  a  great  deal,  naturally.  "Mittel-Europa" 
was  now  more  than  a  mere  phrase.  It  was  now  possible  to  ship  into 
Turkey  what  its  people  needed  the  most,  and  the  rationed  populations  of 
Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  hoped  to  get  much  food  from  Bulgaria 
and  the  Ottoman  empire,  realizing  little,  thanks  to  the  strict  censorship, 
that  there  were  bread  lines  in  the  Turkish  capital  long  before  they  were 
seen  in  Berlin  and  Vienna. 

But  there  was  a  great  deal  of  other  traffic  that  began  to  move  freely 
now.  From  Germany  moved  southward  thousands  of  tons  of  ammunition, 
guns  and  army  equipment  of  all  sorts;  chemicals  and  materia  medica, 
stationery  and  paper,  glassware  and  porcelain,  machinery  and  implements 
and  utensils.    Northward  went  some  cotton,  wool,  hides  and  leather. 

Forcing  the  Serb  from  the  banks  of  the  Danube  broke  also  the  con- 
necting link  between  Russia  and  Serbia.  There  had  been  an  active  traffic 
on  the  river  between  those  two  countries.  The  Russian  base  at  Reni 
supplied  the  Serbs  with  ammunition  and  clothing,  despite  the  many  protests 
that  were  made  to  the  Rumanian  government  by  the  diplomatists  of  the 
Central  Empires.    The  Austro-Hungarian  river  monitors  would  have  liked 

177 


178  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

to  put  an  end  to  this.  But  that  was  impossible.  The  Danube  was  well 
mined  in  the  narrows  of  the  Pass  of  Kazan  and  the  Iron  Gate,  and  else- 
where Serbian  artillery,  for  a  while  under  the  command  of  English  officers, 
made  navigation  of  the  river  most  hazardous.  The  Russian  ships  did  not 
come  up  far  enough  to  be  taken  under  fire  by  the  Austro-Hungarian 
artillery  stationed  near  the  entrance  to  the  Iron  Gates,  but  usually  stopped 
at  Praovo  to  discharge  their  cargoes.  With  the  forcing  back  of  the  Serbian 
army  all  this  ceased. 

That  the  Serbs  would  not  be  able  to  hold  out  against  the  new  combina- 
tion of  German,  Bulgar  and  Austro-Hungarian  was  realized  long  before 
this.  The  Austro-Hungarian  army,  under  General  Potiorek,  to  which  I  was 
attached  for  a  while,  had  in  November  and  December,  1914,  made  a  very 
poor  job  of  subduing  the  Serbs.  The  pressure  of  the  Russians  in  Galicia 
and  the  Bukovina  made  Potiorek's  force  too  small  for  the  lightning 
program  that  was  to  be  carried  through.  In  addition  to  that  the  weather 
conditions  were  the  worst  for  an  army  that  proposed  to  advance  as  fast 
as  infantry  can  march.  In  the  Machwa  district  of  Serbia,  through  which 
the  main  coup  was  being  delivered,  the  country  roads  were  quagmires, 
which  would  freeze  over  during  the  night  and  thaw  again  at  sunrise. 
General  Potiorek,  in  addition,  was  the  poorest  sort  of  a  leader,  and  in 
the  end  he  was  routed  ignominiously  and  Belgrade  retaken  by  the  Serbs. 

These  events  had  given  the  Serbian  army  a  fancied  value  it  did  not 
have.  The  Serbian  government,  moreover,  seems  to  have  done  little  to 
dispel  the  illusions  held  in  Petrograd,  Lyondon  and  Paris.  If  at  any  time 
it  made  its  representations  strong  enough  they  must  have  been  ignored. 
At  any  rate  the  Serb  army  was  not  given  the  support  it  needed  and  so  well 
deserved.  If  any  of  the  armies  engaged  in  the  World  War  deserve  an 
unusual  amount  of  credit,  the  Serbian  army,  more  than  any  other,  is 
entitled  to  it.  It  fought  under  most  adverse  conditions,  with  a  courage 
and  determination  that  must  excite,  or  should,  the  admiration  of  any  man. 
I  am  speaking  in  this  matter  as  an  eye-witness  to  many  of  its  heroic  deeds. 

The  debacle  of  the  plans  of  the  Entente  governments,  so  far  as  the 
Balkan  was  concerned,  caused  Petrograd,  London  and  Paris  to  fly  into 
rage,  the  reasons  for  which  should  be  easily  understood.  At  that  very 
moment  the  fortune  of  war  of  the  Triple  Entente  and  Italy  was  at  its 
lowest  ebb,  and  to  have  Bulgaria  enter  the  fracas  on  the  side  of  the 
Central  Powers  and  Turkey  was  a  bad  blow  to  Franco-Russo-British 
prestige  and  politics.  Once  more,  as  a  first  result  in  the  political  field. 
Premier  Bratianu  of  Rimiania  decided  to  keep  his  hands  and  his  country 
out  of  the  fire,  of  which  more  further  on. 

That  the  Entente  governments  kept  up  their  negotiations  with  Bul- 
garia after  news  of  the  border  settlement  along  the  iMaritza  had  come. 


SOME  CASES  OF  DIPLOMANIA  179 

is  something  which  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand.  To  me,  at 
least,  and  I  would  be  the  last  to  claim  great  political  sagacity,  it  was 
fait  accompli  that  Bulgaria  would  go  with  the  Central  Powers.  I  could 
see  no  other  culmination  of  the  case,  which  may  have  been  due  to  the 
fact  that  I  had  access  to  the  fountainhead  of  information  in  Bulgaria,  the 
small  house  in  Rackovski  street,  where  Dr.  Radoslavoff  held  forth.  There 
was  only  one  man  in  the  Entente  camp  of  diplomatists  in  Sofia  to  whom 
that  also  was  clear.  Mr.  O'Beirne,  the  British  charge  d'affaires,  never 
took  a  hopeful  view  of  the  situation.  He  realized  that  the  demands  of 
the  Bulgarian  government  could  be  met  only  at  the  expense  of  Serbia, 
an  actual  ally,  and  at  those  of  Rumania,  a  prospective  one.  If  it  had 
depended  upon  him,  the  Dobrudja  would  have  been  returned  to  Bulgaria, 
and  the  districts  of  Seres,  Drama  and  Cavalla  would  have  been  lost  by 
Greece.  Being  on  the  spot  he  knew,  much  better  than  he  could  make  the 
men  in  London  see  by  means  of  dispatches,  that  the  Bulgarians  had  made 
up  their  mind  to  wipe  out  the  injustice  of  the  Bucharest  Treaty.  But 
nothing  less  than  that  could  have  changed  the  aspect  of  the  case  on  the 
Balkan. 

Sofia  Entente  Diplomatists  Depart 

One  rainy  fall  evening  a  train  without  lights  pulled  into  a  suburban 
station  of  the  Bulgarian  capital.  On  the  platform  stood  as  disconsolate  a 
group  of  diplomatists  and  their  secretaries,  and  consuls,  as  could  be  met. 
Others  were  arriving.  Much  baggage  was  still  being  dumped  from  wagons 
and  into  the  baggage  cars. 

Mr.  Kozeff,  first  secretary  of  the  Sofia  foreign  office,  was  going 
about  giving  orders,  when  not  greeting  one  of  the  departing  ones.  I 
was  making  observations. 

Mr.  O'Beirne,  the  British  representative,  was  moving  about  in  a  most 
dignified  manner.  The  French  minister,  M.  de  Panafieu,  was  very  sulky 
and  cross,  taking  his  defeat  and  retreat  with  as  little  grace  as  he  could. 
Signor  Cucchi-Boasso,  the  Italian  minister,  was  downcast.  The  Russian 
minister,  M.  Savinski,  was  home  sick  a-bed — really  sick,  as  I  had  ascer- 
tained within  the  flexible  limits  of  the  diplomatically  possible. 

The  cars  being  not  lighted  yet,  the  departing  ministers  had  to  wait 
on  the  platform.  About  the  time  set  for  the  leaving  of  the  special  for 
Dedeagatch,  where  a  British  cruiser  was  waiting  for  the  party,  several 
other  diplomatists  in  Sofia  showed  up.  M.  Derussi,  the  Rumanian  minister, 
reeked  perfume  as  usual.  He  bid  his  colleagues  de  profession  perfunctory 
au  revoir,  and  then  sped  ofif  toward  his  rose-scented  boudoir,  the  raw 
atmosphere  being  anything  but  agreeable  to  a  man  who  had  to  live  in 
surroundings  made  up  entirely  of  the  finest  Turkish  rugs  and  trimmings, 


180  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

shaded  lights  and  violet  de  Parmc.  Over  snow-crowned  Mount  Vidosh 
swept  an  icy  wind,  laden  with  rain,  and  all  about  the  station  were  visible 
the  debris  of  the  good  international  relations  of  diplomacy.  Here  was 
a  case  in  which  diplomania  had  wrecked  itself  in  deadly  impact  with  the 
necessities  of  a  people.  That  much  I  learned  from  the  face  of  M.  Derussi, 
who  with  all  his  idiosyncrasies  was  not  the  worst  of  the  lot. 

The  Greek  minister  also  came  to  say  farewell,  as  did  Mr.  Einstein, 
the  man  with  whom  I  have  acquainted  the  reader  already. 

Everything  in  order  now,  the  dismissed  ministers  got  into  the  cars. 
The  threat  of  the  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  that  he  and  his  allies 
would  recall  their  representatives,  had  come  to  nothing.  I  accompanied 
Mr.  O'Beirne  to  his  compartment  and  then  suggested  the  making  of  a 
little  statement. 

The  British  charge  d'affaires  smiled.  There  was  really  nothing  to  say, 
he  replied.    I  was  not  so  sure  of  that  and  pressed  the  point. 

For  some  moments  we  discussed  the  propriety  of  the  thing  and 
then  Mr.  O'Beirne  authorized  me  to  say  for  him  that  his  stay  in  Bulgaria 
had  been  very  pleasant;  he  regretted  the  turn  of  events,  but  hoped  that 
the  traditionally  friendly  relations  between  Great  Britain  and  Bulgaria 
would  be  re-established  very  soon. 

It  was  my  intention  to  get  the  views  of  the  French  minister.  But 
this  intention  did  not  prosper.  When  I  came  to  his  compartment  he  was 
gesticulating  wildly  at  one  of  his  secretaries  and  shouting  at  the  top  of 
his  voice.  To  my  knock  at  his  door  he  answered  with  a  glowering  grimace. 
Through  the  glass,  forming  the  upper  panel  of  the  next  door,  I  saw  the 
Italian  minister — woe-begone  and  with  tears  in  his  eyes.  I  sped  some 
of  the  secretaries  with  farewells  and  then  rushed  off  the  train,  which  was 
already  in  motion. 

No  handkerchiefs  were  being  waved.  The  group  left  behind  was  as 
serious  and  dejected  as  the  one  that  was  speeding  off  toward  the  Aegean, 
and  which,  in  going  there,  would  pass  through  the  territory  that  was  the 
first  quid  pro  quo  for  Bulgaria's  entry  into  the  War. 

Messrs.  Guechoff,  Daneff  and  Malinoff,  and  others,  had  done  their 
best  to  the  very  last  minute.  They  put  a  period  to  their  efforts  only, 
when  one  fine  morning  the  populace  gathered  about  the  war  proclamations 
on  the  street  corners.  With  them  came  "preventive"  censorship  and  the 
application  of  those  specious  laws  intended  to  make  things  easy  for  govern- 
ments at  war. 

The  Russophiles  had  hoped  that  the  miracle  would  happen,  as  others 
have  done  since  then.  It  was  said  that  they  were  ready  to  start  a  popular 
uprising  against  Czar  Ferdinand  and  Dr.  Radoslavoff.  Stambulowski, 
indeed;  had  already  threatened  the  ruler,  and  there  is  no  telling  what 


SOFIA  ENTENTE  DIPLOMATISTS  DEPART  181 

the  Agrarians  and  Radicals  would  have  done.  It  was  not  that  they  liked 
Czar  Nicholas  and  his  autocratic  government  more  than  their  own  institu- 
tions, but  they  had  absorbed  so  much  Tolstoism  that  their  bonds  with 
Russia  were  the  strongest,  nevertheless.  But  the  people  of  Bulgaria,  the 
soldiers  who  had  fought  in  the  Balkan  War,  were  with  the  government. 
They  were  literally  a  unit  in  their  desire  to  get  at  the  Serbs.  Nothing  was 
so  J5bpular  as  a  song  in  which  the  Serbians  were  referred  to  as  bandits, 
the  singing  of  which  was  the  special  delight  of  the  cadets  of  the  Sofia 
military  academy.  As  the  army  saw  it :  There  was  room  on  the  peninsula 
only  for  one  dominating  state,  and,  as  is  natural  for  a  people,  that  state 
was  to  be  Bulgaria. 

The  Foreign  Office  had  a  diflferent  formula  for  that — a  diplomatic 
one,  of  course.  The  predominancy  in  the  Balkans  of  Bulgaria  would  once 
and  for  always  put  an  end  to  the  troubles  and  problems  which  in  the 
past  had  threatened  the  peace  of  Europe — had  been  a  menace  to  the  world 
in  fact.  I  suppose,  they  said  the  same  in  Belgrade,  though  there,  as  a 
journalist  agent  of  mine  reported,  desires  went  much  further. 

The  chauvinists  in  that  capital  hoped  to  make  Serbia  not  only  the 
dominating  state  on  the  peninsula,  but  they  wished  to  make  an  empire 
even  greater  than  that  of  Emperor  Stephan  Dushan,  who  ruled  over  all 
of  Serbia,  Montenegro,  Albania,  Macedonia,  Epirus  and  Thessally,  and 
whose  Woivodshes,  after  his  death  in  1355,  prepared  the  Serb  empire  for 
conquest  by  the  Turks,  in  1389,  by  engaging  in  internecine  strife  and  the 
state's  division.  The  new  Serb  empire  was  to  be  greater  than  that.  It 
was  to  include  Bulgaria  and  at  least  northern  Greece,  Thrace  as  far  as 
the  Enos-Media  line,  and  with  the  aid  of  SazonoiT  all  that  could  be  wrung 
from  the  Austrians  and  Hungarians,  and  from  the  Rumanians.  To  all 
this  the  Serb  chauvinists  were  laying  claim  in  a  matter  highly  agreeable 
to  the  maps  and  literature  of  Professor  St.  Stanoievitch.  Since  there  was 
sitting  at  the  door  an  army  of  Germans  and  Austro-Hungarians,  under 
the  leadership  of  Mackensen,  a  man  who  had  distinguished  himself  in  the 
rout  of  the  Russian  armies  that  very  summer,  that  was  the  poorest  sort 
of  conduct,  so  far  as  the  Bulgarians  were  interested,  who  themselves  had 
not  forgotten  the  glory  of  Bulgaria  under  Czar  Simeon,  who  ruled  the 
Balkans  from  the  Adria  to  the  Pontus  Euxinos,  the  Serbs  included,  and 
to  whom  even  Byzantium  was  tributary  (893-927). 

These  were  the  factors  that  made  the  hatred  between  Serbia  and  Bul- 
garia the  thing  it  was.  How  far  the  two  peoples  despised  one  another 
can  best  be  illustrated  by  a  little  occurrence  incident  to  the  outbreak  of 
hostilities.  Mr.  KozeflF,  of  the  Sofia  foreign  office,  had  in  person  delivered 
to  the  British,  French,  Italian  and  Russian  ministers  their  passports.  To 
the  Serbian  minister  in  Sofia  this  courtesy  was  not  shown,  despite  the 


182  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

fact  that  the  personal  conduct  of  M.  Tcholak-Antitch  had  been  most 
satisfactory.  When  the  moment  for  the  delivery  of  the  papers  came  a 
messenger  of  the  foreign  office  was  given  a  sealed  envelope,  addressed  to 
the  Serbian  minister  in  the  usual  manner.  The  messenger  also  was  told 
that  the  customary  receipt  was  required. 

The  man  mounted  his  bicycle  and  made  off.  M.  Tcholak-Antitch  must 
have  surmised  what  was  coming,  and  the  envelope  was  opened  before 
the  receipt  was  given  by  signature  in  a  book  carried  by  the  messenger  for 
that  purpose.  At  any  rate  the  Serbian  minister  hesitated  for  a  few  moments 
and  then  signed.  On  the  following  day  he  was  escorted  across  the  border 
at  Zaribrod  by  a  military  guard.  Those  were  things  which  might  have 
been  omitted  without  Bulgaria  losing  anything  thereby  to  the  advantage 
of  the  "arch-enemy." 

A  Clash  Between  ''Minister''  and  Consul  General 

After  a  short  trip  to  the  new  front,  Pirot-Nish,  I  returned  to  Sofia 
to  occupy  myself  again  with  international  political  subjects,  of  which  just 
then  the  activity  of  Mr.  Lewis  Einstein,  and  his  difficulties  with  Mr. 
Dominic  I.  Murphy,  the  United  States  consul  general  at  Sofia,  were  of 
absorbing  interest. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  fact  that  during  the  summer  of  that 
year.  Dr.  Kermecktchieff,  the  consular  agent  of  the  United  States  in 
Sofia,  had  been  dismissed  by  the  State  Department  in  Washington  for 
activities  that  were  considered  pro-German.  A  little  later  it  was  deemed 
necessary  to  send  to  Sofia  a  consul  general  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Murphy, 
who  had  been  stationed  at  Amsterdam,  London,  and  before  that  at  Bor- 
deaux. I  was  in  Sofia  when  Mr.  Murphy  arrived — ^to  make  the  acquaintance 
there,  a  few  days  later,  of  Mr.  Einstein.  Since  the  appointment  of  a  consular 
general  to  Sofia  in  those  days  was  not  an  epoch-making  event,  I  paid  little 
attention  to  the  matter,  apart  from  dispatching  a  line  or  two  upon  his  arrival. 
The  political  situation  in  the  Balkans  was  keeping  me  well  occupied,  and 
thus  it  came  that  I  accepted  the  presence  in  Sofia  of  Messrs.  Murphy 
and  Einstein  as  a  mere  routine  matter.  After  I  had  forwarded  the  news 
that  finally,  also,  the  United  States  government  had  seen  fit  to  send  to 
Bulgaria  a  minister  plenipotentiary,  I  considered  my  duty  done,  though  the 
"Echo  de  Bulgarie,"  semi-official  daily  in  French  of  the  Bulgarian  govern- 
ment, celebrated  the  event  in  a  column  or  so.  I  had  no  reason  then  to 
believe  that  diplomania  could  be  carried  as  far  as  it  was  by  the  new 
United  States  "minister." 

Mr.  Einstein  carried  in  those  days  a  card  upon  which  it  said  in  neatly 
engraved  French,  that  he  was  minister  plenipotentiary.     He  was  indeed  a 


A  CLASH  BETWEEN  ^'MINISTER"  AND  CONSUL        183 

minister  of  that  sort,  but  a  had  been.  The  inscription  on  the  card  fooled 
not  only  me,  but  scores  of  others.  When  my  dispatch  was  days  old  and 
either  in  the  press  or  in  the  wastepaper  basket  of  some  British  or  French 
censor,  en  route,  I  discovered  that  Mr.  Einstein  was  not  the  minister 
plenipotentiary  to  Bulgaria,  but  that  Mr.  Charles  J.  Vopicka  in  Bucharest 
still  filled  his  triplex  appointment. 

Mr.  Einstein,  and  this  time  he  came  again  from  London  and  Paris, 
had  been  detailed  by  the  Department  of  State  to  act  as  "diplomatic  agent" 
in  Sofia.  That  was  a  dififerent  thing,  of  course.  But  it  went  still  far 
enough  to  permit  the  establishing  in  the  Grand  Hotel  Bulgarie  of  a  regular 
legation  with  every  diplomatic  privilege,  including  that  of  sanctuary  for 
other  diplomatists  that  might  get  into  trouble. 

Since  the  public  had  greater  matters  to  consider  than  the  rectification 
of  a  mistake  I  had  made  in  "appointing"  Mr.  Einstein  minister  to  Bulgaria, 
instead  of  stating  that  he  was  diplomatic  agent,  as  I  would  have  done 
had  Mr.  Einstein  disillusioned  me,  I  let  the  matter  rest  and  turned  to  more 
important  things. 

So  far  as  I  knew  the  status  of  Mr.  Einstein  was  now  as  clear  as  that 
of  Mr.  Murphy,  the  consul  g^eneral.  Yet  that  was  not  the  case.  An 
American  citizen  of  Macedonian  origin  had  trouble  with  the  Bulgarian 
government.  It  seems  that  the  military  authorites,  needing  every  man  able 
to  carry  a  gun,  had  detained  the  Macedonian- American  and  forced  him 
into  the  army.    That  was  a  matter  calling  for  my  attention. 

Mr.  Murphy  was  a  man  of  very  few  words.  Though  he  and  his  wife 
had  a  room  next  to  mine  in  the  same  Grand  Hotel  Bulgarie,  we  were  barely 
acquainted.  Mr.  Einstein  had  his  "legation"  on  the  floor  below,  and  I  had 
noticed  that  diplomatic  agent  and  consul  general  came  to  pass  one  another 
without  exchanging  the  conventional  greetings.  That  struck  me  as  odd,  and 
verified  a  hint  which  Mr.  Stanciefif,  of  the  Sofia  Foreign  Office,  and  in 
charge  of  the  consular  bureau,  had  given  me  inadvertently  one  day  while 
I  was  interviewing  him  in  the  case  of  the  Macedonian.  Mr.  Stanciefif  had 
said  that  it  was  rather  hard  to  deal  with  Messrs.  Einstein  and  Murphy  for 
the  reason  that  both  of  them  seemed  to  have  the  same  amount  of  authority, 
which  meant,  in  this  instance,  that  there  was  a  clash  of  authority. 

In  the  course  of  the  next  few  days  I  learned  that  Mr.  Murphy  had 
given  the  Sofia  Foreign  Office  to  understand  that  his  consul-generalship 
was  linked  with  diplomatic  duties,  as  in  the  absence  of  an  accredited  resident 
diplomatist  in  Sofia  itself  that  might  have  been  the  case  anyway.  The 
arrival  of  Mr.  Einstein  in  Sofia  would  have  automatically  confined  the 
consul  general  to  his  especial  duties,  had  it  not  been  that  the  State  Depart- 
ment had  intrusted  Mr.  Murphy  with  certain  seals  and  instructions  which 
he  could  not  surrender  except  upon  specific  orders. 


184  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

For  these  orders  Mr.  Murphy  waited  and  waited.    But  they  came  not. 

The  seals  in  question,  I  must  state,  were  those  that  are  used  for 
the  authentication  of  passports  when  issued  or  viseed. 

In  issuing  an  exequator  to  Consul  General  Murphy,  the  Bulgarian 
government  had  recognized  the  validity  of  the  seals  the  United  States 
official  was  using,  and  there  was  no  question  concerning  them.  But  such 
a  question  arose  when  Mr.  Einstein  also  began  to  issue  passports  and 
verify  them,  and  used  a  similar  seal. 

The  Bulgarian  government  felt  obliged  to  bring  this  to  the  attention 
of  the  American  Consul  General,  and  in  this  manner  Mr.  Murphy  learned 
that  Mr.  Einstein  had  a  set  of  seals  also.  As  the  result  of  this  discovery 
there  was  a  scene  in  the  "legation"  on  the  first  floor  of  the  hotel.  What 
the  result  of  the  set-to  was  I  do  not  know,  nor  can  it  have  been  very 
satisfactory  to  Mr.  Murphy  since  Mr.  Einstein  continued  to  use  the  seals. 

While  the  quality  of  the  official  acts  of  Mr.  Murphy  was  not  ques- 
tioned by  the  Bulgarian  government,  that  courtesy  was  not  extended  to 
those  of  the  diplomatic  agent.  Before  long  the  passports  issued  by  Mr. 
Einstein,  or  viseed  by  him,  resulted  in  trouble  for  the  holders  thereof. 

At  the  Foreign  Office  the  United  States  diplomatic  agent  soon  ceased 
to  be  persona  grata,  and  Mr.  Murphy  came  to  be  the  only  official  with 
whom  the  Bulgarian  government  would  treat.  In  addition  to  that  Mr. 
Einstein  engaged  presently  in  an  affair  which  brought  down  upon  him 
the  attention  of  M.  Georgieff,  the  very  efficient  and  equally  ruthless  chief 
of  Bulgaria's  "political"  that  is,  secret,  police.  M.  Bosniakoff,  assistant 
to  the  chief,  was  detailed  to  keep  the  United  States  diplomatic  agent  under 
closest  surveillance  and  succeeded  in  doing  that  in  a  most  effective  manner. 
Mr.  Einstein  used  to  meet  his  friends,  among  them  a  man  by  name  of 
Walker,  in  a  house  where  the  majority  of  callers  were  supposed  to  be 
violent  adherents  of  the  Entente  cause.  I  may  mention  that  the  modus 
operandi  consisted  of  keeping  in  the  cellar  of  the  house  a  stenographer. 

Mr.  Einstein  a  Most  Zealous  Guardian 

Men  in  the  Sofia  Foreign  Office  had  charged  Mr.  Einstein  with  being 
not  only  the  diplomatic  agent  of  the  several  Entente  governments,  but 
their  most  able  agent  provocateur  besides.  The  rumor  that  Mr.  Einstein 
had  been  sent  to  Constantinople  at  the  special  request  of  M.  Jusserand 
would  not  down,  and  when  the  man  appeared  in  Sofia,  after  having  mean- 
while been  attached  to  the  American  diplomatic  missions  in  London  and 
Paris,  the  report  grew  into  a  fact,  as  such  facts  go. 

The  British  legation  in  Sofia  had  been  left  in  charge  of  a  man  named 
Hirst,  who,  to  give  his  official  status,  was  permitted  to  remain  as  "custodian 


MR.  EINSTEIN  A  MOST  ZEALOUS  GUARDIAN  185 

of  records."  With  Mr.  Hirst  the  United  States  diplomatic  agent  associated 
a  great  deal  in  sharp  contrast  to  Mr.  Murphy,  who  may  have  thought  that 
to  the  observance  of  neutrality  belongs,  on  the  part  of  a  government 
representative,  also  a  due  regard  for  the  susceptibility  of  others.  Be  that 
as  it  may,  the  conduct  of  Messrs.  Einstein  and  Murphy  was  radically 
different  and  contradictory.  Messrs.  Murphy  and  Hirst  associated  officially 
as  much  as  was  necessary,  but  drew  the  line  there,  while  Mr.  Einstein,  a 
great  devotee  of  lawn  tennis,  was  seen  everyday  in  so  public  a  place  as 
a  tennis  court,  with  the  British  custodian  of  records.  That  was  a  privilege 
Mr.  Einstein  had,  and  one  which  in  any  other  country  he  might  have 
indulged  in  as  much  as  he  pleased.  But  the  Bulgarians  are  a  people  who 
easily  suspect.  In  this  manner,  then,  the  case  against  the  United  States 
diplomatic  agent  was  made  complete  and  final. 

The  Entente  governments  had  placed  some  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
the  Bulgarian  ministers  who  were  bound  for  home  from  their  posts  in 
London  and  Paris.  For  a  time  they  were  held  in  detention,  and  the 
Bulgarian  government,  in  order  to  secure  the  release  of  these  men,  decided 
to  practice  reprisal  by  arresting  and  holding  in  detention  the  custodian  of 
records  in  the  British  legation,  Mr.  Hirst. 

Through  a  Russophile  employe  in  the  Sofia  Foreign  Office,  whose  lot 
in  life  I  will  not  make  harder  than  it  is,  the  tip  went  out  to  another 
Russophile  on  the  outside  that  Mr.  Hirst  would  be  arrested.  Mr.  Hirst 
was  the  first  to  hear  of  this,  and  promptly  notified  Mr.  Einstein  that  he 
would  seek  sanctuary  in  the  United  States  legation  on  the  first  floor  of 
the  Grand  Hotel  Bulgarie.  Mr.  Einstein  was  not  in  at  the  time,  but  the 
man  whom  Mr.  Hirst  had  entrusted  with  the  details  of  his  plight  found 
him  shortly  afterwards.  When  the  diplomatic  agent  arrived  Mr.  Hirst  was 
already  in  sanctuary,  sitting  in  the  drawing  room  of  Mr.  Einstein's  suite. 
It  was  later  charged  that  Mr.  Einstein  had  been  tipped  off  first.  The 
known  facts  in  the  case  do  not  seem  to  permit  that  conclusion. 

Fifteen  minutes  later  an  official  from  the  Bulgarian  foreign  office, 
a  police  officer  and  several  gendarmes,  appeared  in  the  hotel  to  arrest  Mr. 
Hirst.  They  were  shown  upstairs  by  the  manager  of  the  hotel,  but  stopped 
short  when,  above  the  door  of  the  suite,  they  saw  the  escutcheon  of  the 
State  Department  of  the  United  States. 

The  resulting  parley  between  Mr.  Einstein  and  the  Bulgarian  officials 
led  to  a  draw.  Mr.  Einstein  said  that  his  "legation,"  though  hardly  a 
legation  in  the  usual  sense,  enjoyed  all  diplomatic  privileges,  including 
the  right  to  give  sanctuary  to  the  diplomatic  agent  of  another  government. 
The  argument  being  based  on  an  old  custom  in  diplomacy,  the  Bulgarian 
government  decided  not  to  press  the  point  just  then.  Before  making 
further  attempts  to  secure  the  person  of  the  custodian  of  British  records 


186  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

an  effort  was  to  be  made  to  ascertain  from  the  United  States  government 
what  its  own  attitude  was. 

But  before  that  sane  couse  had  been  followed  to  its  conclusion,  a 
long  disquisition  on  extra-territoriality  and  the  like,  diplomatic  privileges 
and  what  not,  was  engaged  in  with  Mr.  Einstein.  The  appeal  of  the 
Bulgarian  Foreign  Office  to  Mr.  Murphy  fell  on  deaf  ears,  nor  did  Mr. 
Einstein  get  in  any  way  encouragement  or  support  from  the  consul  general. 
I  have  never  met  a  man  in  the  consular  service  of  the  United  States  who 
could  be  so  exasperatingly  impartial  and  neutral.  Mr.  Murphy  had  advice 
for  neither  of  the  contenders,  and  sat  in  his  little  office  in  the  Slavianska 
ulica  like  a  man  whom  the  quarrel  did  not  in  the  least  concern,  though, 
still  living  in  the  hotel,  he  came  in  contact  with  the  locale  of  trouble  every 
day. 

Whether  or  no  any  part  of  a  hotel  can  be  looked  upon  as  a  legation 
resolved  itself  into  one  of  the  burning  questions  in  diplomacy.  Mr.  Einstein 
claimed  that  the  residence  of  a  foreign  diplomatist  enjoyed  extra-terri- 
toriality no  matter  where  located,  and  that  under  no  circumstances  was  the 
extra-territoriality  contingent  upon  other  elements  than  the  acceptance  by 
a  government  of  the  diplomatist's  credentials.  On  that  point  Mr.  Einstein 
scored  heavily,  and  established,  I  think,  a  precedent  which  will  tend  to 
further  make  diplomacy  intricate. 

But  more  trouble  was  to  come.  Mr.  Hirst  had  to  eat,  of  course.  For 
the  first  two  days  that  condition  had  been  met  satisfactorily  by  ordering 
the  meals  from  the  waiter,  and,  since  Mr.  Einstein  had  been  quick-witted 
enough  to  get  bedding  for  his  extra-territorial  guest,  Mr.  Hirst  was  now 
quite  comfortable,  though  somewhat  the  worse  off  for  lack  of  exercise. 
The  wags  of  Sofia  were  sure  that  in  the  end  Mr.  Einstein  would  rent  a 
tennis  court  and  extend  extra-territoriality  to  that  for  the  benefit  of  his 
guest. 

However,  a  government  bent  upon  being  nasty  has  more  than  one 
way  of  doing  that.  The  manager  of  the  hotel  was  ordered  to  only  serve 
one  portion  of  breakfast,  lunch  and  dinner  in  the  Einstein  apartment- 
legation.  Of  course,  that  did  not  force  the  enemy  upstairs  to  capitulate. 
Mr.  Einstein  ordered  the  meals  for  himself,  and  then  ate  in  the  city. 

There  was  another  way  of  applying  to  Mr.  Hirst  what  his  government 
was  trying  hard  to  apply  to  the  Central  powers — starvation.  The  hotel 
was  instructed  that  no  meals  of  any  sort  were  to  be  served  in  the  rooms 
of  the  United  States  diplomatic  agent.  To  see  that  this  rule  was  observed 
the  guard  about  the  corridor  on  which  the  suite  was  located  was  increased. 

Mr.  Hirst  would  have  starved  to  death  had  it  not  been  that  Mr. 
Einstein  applied  the  very  simple  and  perfectly  obvious  remedy  of  buying 
food  in  town  and  taking  it  into  the  "legation." 


MR.  EINSTEIN  A  MOST  ZEALOUS  GUARDIAN         187 

There  are  certain  things  to  which  even  a  diplomatist  in  sanctuary  must 
attend.  Unfortunately,  the  "legation"  had  no  bathroom,  and  urged  by  an 
outraged  government,  the  servants  of  the  hotel  began  to  object  to  carrying 
so  much  water  in  and  out  of  the  Einstein  suite.  That  was  a  sore  problem 
now.  Already,  the  attempt  had  been  made  by  a  particularly  enterprising 
Bulgarian  police  officer  to  seize  the  person  of  Mr.  Hirst.  Inadvertently 
the  custodian  of  records  had  shown  himself  in  the  open  door  and  two  husky 
gendarmes  had  lurched  forward  to  lay  hands  on  the  man  whom  the 
government  wanted  so  badly.  Retreat  into  the  adjoining  "other"  room 
of  the  legation,  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Hirst,  and  the  warning  hand  of  Mr. 
Einstein,  alone  prevented  a  situation  that  would  have  led  to  war,  slaughter 
and  destruction.  How  nitroglycerineously  instable  and  touchy  international 
relations  can  become  in  the  smallest  of  matters  should  be  illustrated  by  this. 

The  chamber  servant  having  refused  to  be  of  service  any  longer,  Mr. 
Einstein  was  face  to  face  with  the  first  really  serious  problem.  The  lava- 
tory was  across  the  corridor,  to  be  sure,  a  matter  of  eight  feet  at  the  most, 
but  how  to  get  Mr.  Hirst  there  was  most  difficult — impossible,  in  fact, 
so  long  as  the  agents  of  the  Bulgarian  government  stood  ready  in  the 
corridor  to  pounce  upon  the  much  wanted  custodian  of  records. 

Mr.  Einstein  met  the  situation  in  the  end,  as  any  resourceful  diplo- 
matist would,  by  proclaiming  the  corridor  as  under  extra-territoriality. 
To  this  the  Bulgarian  government  objected  violently.  The  argument  was 
reinforced  by  Mr.  Einstein  with  the  sound  logic  that  since  he  had  to 
use  the  same  lavatory,  it  was  a  part  of  the  legation,  and  the  fact  that  he 
did  not  use  it  exclusively  could  not  alter  that  aspect,  since  his  payment  of 
rent  to  the  hotel,  for  his  quarters,  comprised  ipso  facto  the  right  to  use 
the  conveniences  provided  for  the  guests    of  the  house. 

Again  Mr.  Einstein  won,  though  not  entirely  since  it  was  agreed  that 
he  would  have  to  accompany  the  man  in  sanctuary  while  crossing  the  cor- 
ridor— a  sort  of  safe  conduct  arrangement. 

One  would  think  that  a  government  involved  in  a  war  would  have 
felt  very  keenly,  even  if  it  could  not  appreciate,  the  farcical  qualities  of 
this  wrangling  over  the  person  of  a  man  who  was  of  no  importance  in 
the  scheme  eternal.  Far  from  it !  The  manager  of  the  hotel  was  induced 
to  serve  notice  upon  Mr.  Einstein  that  his  rooms  would  be  wanted,  that 
they,  in  fact,  would  soon  be  occupied  by  a  person,  who  was  in  the  habit 
of  always  wanting  these  very  same  rooms  on  the  occasion  of  trips  to  Sofia. 
At  this  display  of  naivete  Mr.  Einstein  laughed,  and  invited  the  serving 
of  a  dispossess  notice. 

In  that  state  the  diplomatic  controversy  was  left  when  the  ministers 
of  the  Bulgarian  government  were  released  and  when  the  cause  for  reprisal 
had  vanished,  therefore. 


188  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

One  may  indeed  wonder  why  the  Bulgarian  government  did  not  show 
amour  propre  enough  to  discontinue  its  fracas  with  Mr.  Einstein.  After 
all  what  could  it  matter  whether  or  no  Mr.  Hirst  was  held  in  detention. 
To  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  actual  that  contributed  little.  Men  quite 
innocent  of  diplomacy  were  being  butchered  by  the  thousands  each  day, 
and  here  was  a  government  willing  to  risk  complications  with  the  United 
States  in  order  to  settle  to  its  own  satisfaction  something  that  could  not 
be  dignified  even  with  being  called  a  trifle  in  comparison  with  the  great 
issues  that  were  being  stressed  on  the  battlefields  in  every  part  of  Europe. 

The  Pseudo-Minister  Had  a  Free  Hand 

One  day  I  expressed  myself  to  this  effect  in  the  Sofia  Foreign  Office. 
The  man  to  whom  I  spoke,  he  is  among  those  mentioned  already,  listened 
attentively,  and  then  produced  from  a  file  a  telegram  in  texte  claire  ad- 
dressed by  Mr.  Lansing  to  Mr.  Einstein,  in  which  it  was  left  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  latter  to  turn  over  to  the  Bulgarian  government  the  man  he 
held  in  sanctuary,  Mr.  Hirst. 

"What  we  suspected  has  been  proven,"  said  the  official.  "Mr.  Einstein 
is  not  only  an  agent  of  the  Entente,  but  an  agent  provocateur  as  well. 
That  is  why  we  persisted  in  our  efforts  against  him.  We  would  have  gone 
much  further  had  we  cared  to  run  the  risk  of  offending  the  people  of 
the  United  States.  The  entire  matter  would  have  been  dropped  had  we 
not  known  that  the  Department  of  State  of  the  United  States  took  the 
view  that  the  case  of  extra-territoriality  established  by  iMr.  Einstein  was 
far  from  clear  and  reasonable.  We  carried  this  thing  to  its  ridiculous 
proportions  in  order  to  get  rid  of  Mr.  Einstein." 

Though  fully  informed  as  to  the  details  of  the  case,  I  had  not  dealt 
with  it  very  extensively,  and  it  seem§  that  the  few  dispatches  I  wrote 
were  suppressed  by  the  British  censors.  It  might  not  be  well  to  let  the 
American  people  know  what  was  actually  going  on  in  Sofia.  Knowing 
now  that  the  State  Department  did  not  entirely  sanction  the  conduct  of 
Mr.  Einstein,  I  wrote  up  the  case  with  more  details  and  cabled  it.  A 
little  while  thereafter  Mr.  Einstein  was  "transferred"  from  Sofia,  and 
today  is  no  longer  in  the  United  States  diplomatic  service. 

But  before  my  dispatch  could  take  effect,  Mr.  Einstein  had  another 
occasion  to  show  his  mettle.  A  former  attache  of  the  American  legation 
at  Bucharest,  Mr.  Frank  A.  Couche,  had  selected  to  engage  in  business  in 
Rumania.  He  was  to  import  certain  articles,  and  in  connection  with  that 
found  it  necessary  to  go  to  Salonica,  then  occupied  by  the  forces  of  General 
Sarrail.  When  Mr.  Couche  arrived  at  Sofia,  he  found  that  the  Bulgarian 
authorities  were  averse  to  having  him  get  to  Salonika  via  Dedeagatch. 


THE  PSEUDO-MINISTER  HAD  A  FREE  HAND  189 

Anxious  to  get  to  his  destination,  the  former  secretary  of  the  American 
legation  in  Bucharest  attempted,  so  the  Bulgarians  alleged,  to  bribe  an 
inspector  of  passes  working  at  the  Sofia  railroad  station.  The  official  in 
question  seems  to  have  been  selected  for  the  post  for  more  reasons  than 
one.  Formerly  the  inspector  had  lived  at  Dallas,  Texas,  and  was  quite 
familiar  with  Americanisms.  He  later  swore  that  he  took  the  money  from 
the  man  bound  for  Salonika  and  turned  it  over  to  the  secret  police.  AH 
of  which  seems  to  coincide  with  what  happened.  The  traveller  took  a 
train  going  south,  but  two  stations  beyond  Sofia  was  arrested,  and  brought 
to  trial. 

As  piece  de  resistance  in  the  attempt  by  the  Bulgarian  government  to 
prove  culpability  served  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  Einstein  in  a  rather  cryptic 
way  and  addressed  to  the  man  who  wanted  to  go  to  Salonika. 

It  was  not  very  pleasant  for  an  American  to  live  in  Sofia  and  Bulgaria 
after  that.  M.  Georgieff,  the  chief  of  political  police,  smelled  a  spy  every 
time  he  saw  an  American,  as  I  was  to  discover  myself  shortly  afterward. 

Not  long  before  the  culmination  of  the  Einstein-Hirst  affair,  I  had 
met  another  representative  of  the  United  States  diplomatic  service,  who 
seemed  bent  upon  provocation.  The  critical  state  caused  by  the  torpedoing 
of  the  steamship  "Ancona"  in  the  Mediterranean  had  called  me  to  Vienna. 
A  telegram  from  the  office  of  the  Associated  Press  in  New  York,  relayed 
to  me  via  the  Berlin  bureau  of  the  service,  said  a  rupture  of  relations 
between  the  United  States  and  those  concerned  with  the  sinking  of  the 
vessel  in  question  was  not  out  of  the  question.  I  am  still  surprised  that 
this  message  succeeded  in  getting  past  the  German  and  Austro- Hungarian 
censors.     But  it  did. 

To  learn  more  of  the  details  of  the  case  I  called  one  morning  at 
the  Austro-Hungarian  admiralty,  there  being  no  separate  ministry  of 
marine  in  the  governmental  scheme  of  the  monarchy.  I  told  the  chief 
of  one  of  the  bureaus  that  the  situation  was  really  a  serious  one,  and 
that  it  would  be  best  to  clear  up  finally  whether  it  was  a  German  submarine 
or  an  Austro-Hungarian  that  had  done  the  damage.  The  "Lusitania" 
case  had  left  the  people  of  the  United  States  in  no  mood  to  view  with 
equanimity  even  a  partial  repetition  of  the  offense,  and  it  was  believed, 
therefore,  that  the  Austro-Hungarian  government,  in  order  to  avoid  the 
imminent  possibility  of  war  between  the  United  States  and  Germany,  had 
shouldered  blame  which  really  should  have  rested  upon  the  Germans. 
Attention  to  the  case  for  a  week  or  so  had  left  me  also  under  that 
impression. 

When  I  was  through  stating  my  wishes  the  chief  of  the  bureau 
informed  me  that  a  report  from  the  officer  in  charge  of  the  submarine 
that  had  sunk  the  "Ancona"  had  just  been  received.     With  that  he  took 


190  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

several  sheets  of  paper  from  his  desk  and  handed  them  to  me.  I  noticed 
that  the  report  came  from  the  Austro-Hungarian  naval  station  at  Pola. 
It  was  a  rather  detailed  account  of  what  had  happened  to  the  steamship. 
The  language  showed,  if  it  did  not  prove,  that  it  was  an  Austro-Hungarian 
submarine  that  had  torpedoed  the  "Ancona." 

I  requested  permission  to  use  the  data  of  the  report.  The  officer 
said  that  he  had  no  objection  to  that,  but  advised  me  to  consult  with  Baron 
von  Montlong,  the  chief  of  the  press  department  of  the  Foreign  Office, 
before  attempting  to  forward  my  dispatch.  So  far  as  he  knew,  the  note 
in  reply  to  the  representations  of  the  United  States  government  had  not 
yet  been  finished,  although  in  the  main  its  tone  had  been  decided  upon 
in  accord  with  a  preliminary  report  by  wire  that  had  been  made  by  the 
commander  at  Pola.  Count  Burian,  the  Austro-Hungarian  minister  of  the 
exterior,  had  wished  to  learn  more  of  the  details  before  turning  the  note 
over  to  Mr.  Penfield,  the  United  States  ambassador. 

I  copied  such  parts  of  the  report  as  were  important,  wrote  my 
dispatch  and  submitted  it  to  the  chief  of  the  press  department,  who  said 
that  it  would  be  bad  taste  to  have  my  dispatch  precede  the  actual  presenta- 
tion of  the  note  to  the  United  States  ambassador.  It  would  go  as  soon 
as  this  had  been  done. 

Pre-Conceived  Views  of  a  Diplomatist 

Later  in  the  afternoon  I  called  at  the  American  embassy,  and  found 
that  the  note  had  not  yet  been  delivered.  Mr.  Penfield  was  not  in,  and  for 
that  reason  I  was  received  by  Mr.  U.  Grant- Smith,  the  conseiller  and  first 
secretary  of  the  embassy. 

My  inquiry,  naturally,  led  to  a  discussion  of  the  "Ancona"  aflfair, 
despite  the  fact  that  Mr.  Penfield,  without  more  than  knowing  me  as  yet 
by  appearance,  had  told  a  colleague  of  mine,  for  no  reason  within  my  ken, 
that  all  the  news  I  would  ever  get  out  of  his  embassy  I  could  "put  in 
one  eye  and  not  feel  it."  In  view  of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Penfield  was  very 
much  overworked  and,  as  a  result,  nervous,  I  paid  no  attention  to  this 
uncalled-for  remark  of  his,  especially  since  on  the  whole  he  was  given 
to  violent  prejudices  anyway,  as  I  had  learned. 

I  took  it  for  granted  that  Mr.  U.  Grant- Smith  would  know  more 
about  the  "Ancona"  aflfair  than  I  did,  and  proceeded  to  question  him. 
To  my  surprise  the  first  secretary  accepted  as  an  absolute  fact  that  it  was 
a  German  submarine  that  had  sunk  the  ship.  He  said  he  had  every  reason 
to  believe  that  such  was  the  case.  The  Austro-Hungarian  government  was 
ready  to  shoulder  responsibility,  because  it  feared  that  this  additional 
item  was  more  than  the  account  of  the  German  Admiralty,  Tirpitz  et  al. 


PRE-CONCEIVED  VIEWS  OF  A  DIPLOMATIST        191 

could  stand.  The  least  that  would  come  of  it  would  be  a  rupture  of 
diplomatic  relations  between  the  United  States  and  Germany. 

Much  of  this  was  known  to  me,  and  so  I  began  to  question  Mr. 
Grant-Smith  as  to  his  evidence  and  proof  that  the  "Ancona"  had  been 
sunk  by  a  German  submarine.  Since  the  secretary  was  not  present  when 
the  ship  was  sunk,  and  since  the  deposition  of  the  captain,  officers,  crew 
and  passengers  of  the  ill-fated  vessel  had  not  established  the  guilt  of  the 
Germans,  I  wondered  whether  Mr.  Grant-Smith  had  learned  from  Austrian 
sources  that  it  was  a  German  and  not  an  Austro-Hungarian  submarine  that 
was  responsible. 

A  question  in  that  direction  was  not  answered  satisfactorily  by  the 
secretary.  At  any  rate,  he  advised,  I  would  do  well  to  send  a  dispatch  in 
conformity  with  his  opinions.  That  I  offered  to  do,  if  I  could  give  my 
authority.  Would  Mr.  Grant-Smith  permit  me  to  quote  him?  No,  that 
was  out  of  the  question.  He  was  not  allowed  to  permit  himself  to  be 
quoted.  I  could  use  the  informtion  on  my  own  responsibility,  if  I  cared 
to  do  that. 

That  I  did  not  use  the  information,  such  as  it  was,  was  due  to  a 
number  of  circumstances.  Item  number  one  in  the  list  was  that  I  could 
get  no  such  dispatch  past  the  Austro-Hungarian  censorship.  Secondly, 
I  had  to  cite  my  authority  in  at  least  some  manner,  according  to  the  cast- 
iron  rules  of  the  service.  I  could  have  managed  that  by  saying :  "Accord- 
ing to  reliable  sources,"  or,  "it  was  learned  authoritatively,"  or  again,  "it 
is  understood  in  well-informed  circles."  But  that  would  have  caused 
the  Foreign  Office  press  department  to  make  inquiry  as  to  who  my 
source  was,  and  since  I  could  not  say  that  the  origin  of  my  information 
was  Austro-Hungarian  I  would  have  let  the  cat  out  of  the  bag,  or  stood 
there  a  self -convicted  agent  provocateur. 

Mr.  Grant-Smith,  to  whom  I  pointed  out  this  situation,  could  not 
see  it  that  way,  and  grew  rather  excited,  being  of  a  very  nervous  disposi- 
tion also.  I  finally  taxed  his  patience  too  much  by  saying  that  for  the 
time  being  it  would  be  best  to  wait  for  the  note  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
government.  If  that  note  showed  this  government  as  assuming  all  respon- 
sibility nothing  could  be  done  other  than  holding  it  responsible  for  the  act. 
If  Austria-Hungary  was  willing  to  incur  the  displeasure  of  the  United 
States  more  than  it  had  already  done  in  the  Dumba  affair,  then  it  evi- 
dently knew  what  it  was  doing. 

To  the  remark  of  the  secretary  that  this  was  a  maneuver  to  draw  from 
Germany  the  wrath  of  the  civilized  world,  I  returned  something  to  the 
effect  that  there  was  no  way  of  preventing  that. 

The  next  thing  was  that  the  secretary  proved  himself  entirely 
ignorant  of  the  prime  essential  facts  of  the  case.    He  maintained  that  the 


192  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Austro-Hungarian  navy  had  no  submarines  capable  of  operating  as  far 
out  as  the  waters  where  the  "Ancona"  was  torpedoed.  I  told  him  that 
at  Pola  there  were  now  such  boats,  having  been  brought  there  in  exactly 
the  same  manner  as  the  "U"  boat  under  Captain  Hersing,  which  tor- 
pedoed the  British  battleships  "Triumph"  and  "Majestic"  in  the  shore 
waters  of  Gallipoli  four  months  before — under  their  own  power  from 
Wilhelmshaven.  I  thought  it  probable  that  this  late  type  of  submarine  in 
the  Austro-Hungarian  service  was  commanded  by  German  officers  and 
men,  but  stated  that  if  such  a  complement  was  dressed  in  Austro-Hungarian 
uniforms,  with  the  boat  flying  the  flag  of  the  dual  monarchy,  it  would  be 
extremely  difficult  to  lay  responsibility  for  the  sinking  of  the  "Ancona" 
at  the  door  of  the  German  government. 

When  finally  I  left  the  room  Mr.  Grant-Smith  seemed  to  be  under 
the  impression  that  I  was  pro-'German,  The  fact  is  that  I  had  no  reason 
to  assert  or  even  insinuate  that  the  note  about  to  be  transmitted  to  the 
United  States  government  was  a  fabrication,  so  long  as  I  did  not  know 
and  could  not  prove  that  it  was  this.  I  knew  no  more  than  what  I  had 
seen  at  the  navy  bureau,  and  what  the  note  contained  later,  and  had,  there- 
fore, to  confine  myself  to  the  limits  of  my  information.  I  would  have 
given  publicity  to  the  views  of  Mr.  Grant- Smith  had  he  been  willing  to 
assume  responsibility  for  them.  There  is  no  doubt  that  opinions  of  the 
first  secretary  of  the  American  embassy  in  Vienna  had  a  certain  value 
in  connection  with  the  case.  They  had  no  value  whatsoever  when  pub- 
lished under  the  cloak  of  anonymity:  Firstly,  because  they  were  not  in 
accord  with  the  admissions  made  by  the  Austro-Hungarian  government; 
secondly,  they  were  not  based  on  reliable  information.  The  difference 
between  our  respective  positions  was:  That  I  would  have  been  held  re- 
sponsible by  the  several  authorities  concerned,  and  by  the  service  which 
employed  me,  while  Mr.  Grant- Smith  would  not  have  been  held  responsible. 

The  newspaperman  dealing  with  diplomatists  must  always  bear  in  mind 
that  in  the  end  his  diplomatic  "friends"  will  sacrifice  him  when  things 
go  wrong — do  sacrifice  him  every  time  with  the  greatest  facility,  since 
governments  and  foreign  offices  generally  hold  the  journalist  to  be  at  best 
an  interesting  pariah  who  lives  on  the  morsels  that  fall  from  the  table  of 
diplomacy.  The  newspaperman,  generally,  is  persona  grata  with  diplo- 
matists only  on  two  conditions.  In  the  one  he  must  be  willing  to  be 
and  remain  the  convenient  tool;  in  the  other  he  must  be  able  enough  to 
see  through  their  schemes  and  hold  his  knowledge  over  them  as  a  sword 
of  Damocles. 

There  is  one  person  whom  the  average  diplomatist  and  politician 
temporarily  in  power  cannot  bear  for  any  length  of  time — the  newspaper- 
man who  feels  that  he  has  a  duty  toward  the  public  and  mankind.    I  have 


PRE-CONCEIVED  VIEWS  OF  A  DIPLOMATIST         193 

been  too  long  in  journalism  to  longer  hold  the  view  that  in  newspaper 
work  and  the  public  press  field  the  ideal  is  attainable.  So  long  as  news- 
papers must  subsist  on  the  revenues  produced  by  circulation  and  adver- 
tisements, and  so  long  as  it  will  remain  impracticable  and  dangerous  to 
subsidize  governmentally,  or  in  any  other  manner,  the  press  of  a  people 
that  wishes  to  remain  free  and  independent,  so  long  must  society  be  pre- 
pared to  expect  from  the  journalist  nothing  more  than  reconciliation,  on 
an  ethical  base,  of  the  altruistic  with  the  material,  the  enlightenedly  selfish 
with  the  striving  for  the  better. 

The  views  of  some  journalistic  exploiters  of  the  public,  that  this 
scheme  leaves  their  hands  untied  by  obligations  toward  the  aggregate  that 
bestows  upon  them  the  "freedom  of  the  press,"  are  no  less  detrimental  to 
a  state  than  the  "semi-official  newspaper"  and  news  service,  the  favorite 
method  of  subsidy  employed  by  governments  that  wish  to  retain  absolute 
control  of  public  opinion  by  forming  public  opinion.  Nor  is  it  necessary 
that  this  subsidy  come  from  governmental  sources,  as  such  recognizable, 
as  the  Great  War  has  shown  in  too  many  instances. 

The  ethics  of  journalism  are  simple.  The  duty  of  the  press  is  easily 
recognized,  and  the  metier  of  the  newspaperman,  especially  that  of  the 
editor,  is  not  as  intricate  as  some  of  them  would  have  the  public  believe. 
There  are  more  charlatans  in  press  work,  and  more  unpunished  criminals, 
than  in  any  other  business  I  know — diplomacy,  politics  and  government 
alone  excepted. 

I  make  mention  of  these  things  here  to  draw  attention  to  the  fact 
that  any  and  all  of  the  things  I  have  touched  upon  so  far  would  have 
been  impossible  had  journalistic  conditions  been  different.  To  the  person 
that  has  run  the  gauntlet  of  censorship  and  propaganda  for  any  length 
of  time  that  will  be  clear. 

A  Diplomatist  of  Ingrown  Intellect 

Needless  to  say,  diplomania  was  not  confined  to  just  one  camp  of  the 
belligerents.  Lest  I  should  strengthen  in  some  classes  of  Germans  the 
notion  that  their  own  service  was  as  good  and  simon-pure  as  they  were 
then  prone  to  believe — and  as  some  still  believe — I  must  mention  here  the 
case  of  Prince  Wolf-Metternich,  successor  to  Freiherr  von  Wangenheim 
as  German  ambassador  to  the  Ottoman  court.  There  are  other  cases,  of 
course,  some  almost  as  celebrated,  but  this  one  is  of  especial  interest  for 
the  reason  that  it  never  came  to  the  attention  of  the  German  people.  After 
all,  I  am  merely  supplementing  the  world's  knowledge  of  what  it  knows  of 
diplomacy,  and  what  in  a  few  years  it  will  have  again  completely  forgotten. 

When  von  Wangenheim  had  been  carried  off,  prematurely,  by  the 


194  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

climax  that  follows  hardening  of  the  arteries,  he  was  succeeded  by  Prince 
Wolf-Metternich,  great  noble,  Borussian,  and  special  friend  of  Emperor 
William.  It  would  have  been  much  better  to  leave  the  man  in  Germany, 
but  the  post  being  vacant,  and  the  prince  wanting  it,  the  emperor  decided 
to  do  the  Turks  a  favor.  Thus  it  came  that  the  most  unbending  and  most 
conceited  member  of  the  German  diplomatic  service  came  to  inhabit  the 
great  palace  on  the  Boulevard  Ayas  Pasha  in  Pera. 

Von  Wangenheim  had  been  an  easy-going  man.  Though  Prussian  to 
the  very  core,  he  was  a  man  of  the  world,  and  as  such  rather  out  of 
sympathy  with  the  things  that  were  Prussian  in  a  bad  sense.  The  result 
of  this  was  that  he  got  along  with  the  Turks  very  well,  though  there  were 
rough  places  which  only  Corvette-Captain  Humann  could  negotiate.  On 
such  occasions  von  Wangenheim  would  happily  forget  that  he  was  an 
"Excellenz"  in  His  Majesty's  service,  and  look  for  no  more  than  speedy 
solutions  and  favorable  results.  If  von  Wangenheim  was  anything  at  all, 
he  was  as  good  an  executive  as  could  be  found.  In  Captain  Humann  he 
had  an  aide  worth  his  weight  in  gold  several  times  over — and  the  captain 
always  managed  to  do  these  things  without  feeling  that  he  had  become  in- 
dispensable. 

Prince  Wolf-Metternich  took  great  offense  at  several  things  he  found 
at  Pera.  Item  number  one  was  that  he  detested  the  free  and  easy  air  of 
the  German  ambassy,  which  von  Wangenheim  had  left  behind.  The  prince 
loathed  all  commoners,  and  especially  Captain  Humann.  Upon  the  Turks 
he  looked  as  half-barbarians,  and  their  remarkably  consistent  democracy 
in  intercourse  was  revolting  to  this  aristocrat  par  excellence.  The  prince 
was  not  long  in  Constantinople  before  the  Turks  felt  that  he  was  treating 
them  as  a  vassal  government.  As  Borussian  and  friend  of  the  emperor, 
Wolf-Metternich  was  divine-righter  of  the  worst  type. 

I  had  heard  of  these  things  from  Turkish  friends  of  mine  whom  I 
used  to  meet  in  Sofia,  Vienna,  Budapest  and  Berlin,  but  had  never  taken 
much  stock  in  them,  because  I  knew  how  touchy  the  men  in  Stamboul 
could  be  at  times. 

In  August,  1916,  I  was  in  Berlin,  and  heard  to  my  great  astonishment 
that  Captain  Humann  was  filling  some  detail  in  the  Navy  Office.  I  knew 
the  captain  well,  having  been  shown  many  a  favor  by  him  while  I  was  at 
the  Dardanelles  and  on  Gallipoli,  and  decided  to  call  on  him. 

I  was  more  astonished  when  he  told  me  that  he  had  little  to  do  in  the 
Navy  Office.  His  room  looked  it.  It  was  my  impression  the  able  naval 
officer  was  busiest  chewing  pencils.  I  made  some  remark  to  that  efifect, 
but  the  captain  was  reticent,  and  remained  that  even  when  I  asked  cautiously 
whether  or  no  he  was  doing  a  turn  at  ''Strafversetzung" — demotion  detail 
for  disciplinary  purposes. 


A  DIPLOMATIST  OF  INGROWN  INTELLECT  195 

Captain  Humann  adniilled  nothing.  Knowing  that  he  was  too  valuable 
to  sit  in  Berlin,  when  he  was  almost  indispensable  in  the  scheme  of  things 
in  Constantinople,  I  drew  my  own  conclusions,  got  in  touch  with  friends 
of  mine  in  Stamboul  and  learned  the  details. 

The  haughty  prince-ambassador  had  no  patience  with  a  mere  com- 
moner, even  if  that  commoner  was  the  son  of  so  distinguished  a  person  as 
Humann's  father,  the  celebrated  archeologist  who  had  excavated  Pergam- 
mon  and  thereby  enriched  greatly  the  stock  of  knowledge  of  the  world. 
But  the  prince  had  met  opposition  in  his  endeavor  to  have  Captain  Humann 
supplanted  as  naval  attache  and  commander  of  the  German  Naval  Base 
on  the  Bosphorus.  The  men  in  the  ministries  of  Stamboul,  especially  Enver 
Pasha,  the  Ottoman  minister  of  war,  were  very  fond  of  Captain  Humann, 
who  was  born  and  raised  in  the  Levant  and  understood  the  Turks,  Greeks 
and  Armenians  as  no  other  person  in  the  German  embassy  did. 

But  Prince  Wolf-Metternich  was  not  a  friend  of  William  II  for 
nothing.  One  day,  then,  the  captain  was  transferred  to  Berlin  to  the  pencil- 
chewing  detail  in  the  Imperial  Naval  Office.  There  was  but  one  person 
in  Pera  who  could  tell  the  Turks  what  to  do,  and  that  was  the  prince,  as 
he  thought.  It  was  that  same  person  in  his  dual  capacity  of  prince  and 
diplomatist  who  intended  preparing  the  Turks  then  and  there  for  the  role 
they  were  to  have  in  the  future  under  German  suzerainty.  The  prince  was 
not  exactly  a  Pan-German.  He  was  something  far  worse:  A  feudal 
lord  who  feasted  on  the  very  moods  of  His  Majesty. 

To  the  Turks  these  things  gave  offense.  They  had  not  entered  the 
war  to  pass  under  the  overlordship  of  the  Germans.  Whatever  may  be 
said  of  them,  one  thing  is  certain :  The  Turkish  leaders  wanted  to  have 
their  country  truly  a  sovereign  state. 

When  Captain  Humann  had  been  removed,  the  princely  ambassador 
proceeded  immediately  with  giving  the  Turkish  government  to  understand 
that  from  now  on  it  would  be  different.  The  Turkish  government  would 
in  the  future  take  its  orders  from  the  ambassadorial  palace  on  the 
Boulevard  Ayas  Pasha. 

Diplomatists  seem  to  be  largely  recruited  from  the  class  that  learns 
slowly,  if  it  learns  at  all.  Had  it  been  otherwise.  Prince  Wolf-Metternich 
could  have  delved  into  the  prior  effort  by  the  Berlin  government  to  remove 
Liman  von  Sanders  Pasha  in  favor  of  von  der  Goltz  Pasha.  He  would 
have  learned  that  Enver  Pasha  had  a  mind  of  his  own,  and  that,  despite 
his  readiness  to  please  the  Germans,  he  had  very  appropriate  notions  as 
to  the  fitness  of  things  in  state  sovereignty. 

But  Prince  Wolf-Metternich  thought  that  he  was  by  far  a  greater 
man  than  Baron  von  Wangenheim,  and,  this  being  so,  he  could  do  things 
which  his  predecessor  in  office  CQuld  not  do.     Again  he  was  mistaken. 


196  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Quite  blandly  the  Turkish  government  informed  him  one  day  that  it  was 
ready  to  uphold  its  policy  of  non-interference  in  Ottoman  internal  affairs 
by  the  Germans,  even  if  it  had  to  break  off  relations  with  its  ally,  the 
German  government.  ' 

Publicity  Is  Used    as  a  Corrective 

For  once  the  cold  ambassador  fumed,  but  that  did  not  help.  Any  other 
diplomatist  would  have  been  recalled  then  and  there,  but  William  II  thought 
a  great  deal  of  his  ambassador  and  did  not  recall  him.  To  his  Majesty 
the  men  in  control  in  Turkey  were  upstarts  of  the  worst  sort,  of  course. 
Enver  Pasha  was  to  him  never  more  than  a  second  lieutenant,  who  knew 
little  of  military  affairs,  which  was  true  enough,  but  the  fact  was  that 
Enver  Pasha  represented  just  then  a  goodly  half  of  the  Ottoman  govern- 
ment. Talaat  Pasha,  then  still  a  hey,  and  minister  of  the  Interior,  was  the 
other  half  of  that  government,  but  had  started  in  life  as  a  telegraph 
operator  and  owed  everything  to  the  Turkish  Revolution.  With  such  men 
William  II  could  not  be  patient  very  long.  They  were  not  his  equals  on 
the  divine-right  plane.  What  His  Majesty  totally  overlooked  was  that 
in  the  Ottoman  empire  there  was  no  such  thing  as  an  aristocracy,  and  that 
the  commoner  might  rise  in  the  government  as  ability  and  opportunity 
permitted.  All  in  all,  William  II  held  an  opinion  of  the  leaders  in  the 
Turkish  government  which  was  but  slightly  better  than  that  held  by 
Emperor  Francis  Joseph  of  King  Peter  of  Serbia. 

The  Berlin  Foreign  Office  had  now  and  then  essayed  to  bring  His 
Majesty  to  a  better  understanding  of  affairs  on  the  Bosphorus.  But  it  had 
failed.  Chancellor  Bethmann-Hollweg  was  too  much  afraid  of  losing  his 
job  to  take  the  stand  he  should  have  taken — which  the  chancellor  would 
have  taken  had  there  been  a  responsible  ministry  in  Berlin.  Meanwhile,  it 
was  again  the  censorship  that  kept  the  sorry  fracas  out  of  the  press  and 
from  the  attention  of  the  German  public.  The  precautions  that  were  taken 
for  keeping  the  imbroglio  out  of  the  newspapers  were  the  most  elaborate — 
nevertheless  it  was  a  newspaper  dispatch  which  finally  brought  about  a 
change. 

When  I  had  gathered  the  details  of  the  case  I  brought  them  to  the 
attention  of  the  Vienna  government  in  form  of  a  newspaper  dispatch.  The 
subject  being  political,  the  story  had  to  be  submitted  to  the  press  department 
in  the  Vienna  Ministry  of  the  Exterior.  The  men  in  the  ministry  knew 
well  enough  what  had  been  going  on  in  Constantinople,  but  they  were 
powerless  to  effect  a  change. 

My  dispatch  caused  somewhat  of  a  sensation.  After  all  the  secret 
had  not  been  as  well  kept  as  was  thought.    How  had  I  learned  the  details  ? 


PUBLICITY  IS  USED  AS  A  CORRECTIVE  197 

Naturally,  that  was  not  to  be  explained.  I  was  asked  not  to  insist  that 
the  dispatch  be  forwarded  to  Berlin,  which  way  I  would  have  to  route  it 
to  get  it  to  the  United  States.  But  I  was  obdurate — the  dispatch  would 
have  to  go.  To  insist  that  the  dispatch  went  might  mean  the  end  of  my 
usefulness  in  the  Central  Powers  countries,  I  was  told.  With  that  I  had 
counted  so  often  that  it  no  longer  influenced  me. 

In  the  end  the  dispatch  was  forwarded  and  thus  it  came  that  a  few 
days  later  Prince  Wolf-Metternich  was  recalled.  More  than  that,  the 
Ottoman  government  insisted  that  Captain  Humann  be  reinstated  as  naval 
attache  and  commander  of  the  German  Naval  Base  on  the  Bosphorus,  and 
one  day  the  new  ambassador  to  Turkey,  Dr.  Richard  von  Kiihlmann,  and 
Captain  Humann  passed  through  Vienna  on  their  way  to  Constantinople. 
Neither  of  them  knew  that  it  was  the  fear  of  the  Berlin  Foreign  Office 
of  being  confronted  with  the  details  of  the  imbroglio  in  a  Swiss  or  Dutch 
newspaper  which  brought  about  the  change. 

To  the  best  of  my  knowledge  my  dispatch  never  reached  the  United 
States,  but  a  part  of  its  substance  leaked  out,  nevertheless.  The  rumor  that 
the  Turkish  government  was  ready  to  sever  relations  with  the  German 
government,  which  at  that  time  made  the  rounds,  was  caused  by  it. 

Such  is  the  value  of  conscientious  newspaper  work,  and  such  the  effect 
of  censorship.  The  story  might  have  been  published  months  before,  and 
the  situation  would  have  never  become  as  critical  as  it  was,  had  the  German 
journalists  been  able  to  treat  the  subject.  While  the  German  correspondents 
in  Constantinople,  notably  Mr.  Paul  Weitz  of  the  Frankfurter  Zeitung, 
were  well  acquainted  with  the  state  of  affairs,  they  could  not  afford  to 
write  of  it.  There  was  the  censorship,  of  course,  and  the  doors  of  the 
German  embassy  would  have  been  closed  on  any  correspondent  who  had 
shown  himself  "audacious"  enough  to  question  for  a  second  the  superior 
wisdom  and  august  station  of  Prince  Wolf-Metternich.  Fortunately,  I 
was  not  in  that  position,  and  for  the  sake  of  mankind  undertook  what 
others  could  not  undertake. 

When  the  gods  of  Greek  mythology  banished  themselves  from  the  earth 
they,  unfortunately,  left  behind  them  the  diplomatists.  I  have  not  yet 
encountered  the  ambassador  who  did  not  think  himself  omniscient  and 
omnipotent.  Now  and  then  a  minister  may  be  found  ready  to  admit  that 
he  is  a  plain  mortal — the  ambassador  and  diplomatic  secretary  will  never 
admit  that.  The  sooner  the  public  insists  that  these  men  are  to  be  held 
responsible  for  their  acts,  the  sooner  will  the  probability  of  wars  be 
lessened.  So  long  as  ambassadors  are  enabled  to  wipe  out  their  own  record 
of  malfeasance  by  fostering  a  state  that  will  in  the  end  lead  to  war,  so 
long  will  we  have  instances  of  the  sort  here  described. 

Quite  the  best  thing  that  could  happen  just  now  would  be  to  investigate 


198  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  conduct  of  every  diplomatist  who  had  a  hand  in  the  Great  War,  and 
this  world  would  be  much  the  better  off  if  a  few  of  them  could  be  made 
to  answer  for  their  conduct.  I  think  that  was  what  President  Wilson  had 
in  mind  when  he  framed  the  first  of  his  famous  Fourteen  Points,  con- 
cerning "open  covenants  openly  arrived  at."  That  Mr.  Wilson  has 
abandoned  this  very  valuable  tenet  is  no  reason  why  the  public  should  also 
throw  it  into  discard.  There  will  be  more  diplomania  unless  the  public 
everywhere  applies  preventive  measures. 


XI 

DIPLOMACY  IN  RUMANIA 

RUMANIA  enjoys  the  distinction  of  being  the  most  backward  of 
small  nations  in  Europe.  Of  its  rural  population  of  five  millions 
less  than  20  per  cent  can  read  and  write.  The  urban  populace, 
numbering  about  1.4  millions,  has  only  60  per  cent  of  literates.  Though  the 
form  of  government  is  a  constitutional  monarchy  with  a  responsible  min- 
istry, the  actual  participants  in  politics  number  about  2,000  individuals: 
The  higher  government  officials,  the  great  landowners,  professional  poli- 
ticians and  the  leading  lawyers. 

The  state  is,  of  course,  predominantly  agricultural  and  the  soil  is  held 
by  some  6,000  large  and  small  landowners.  The  peasantry  is  held  in 
peonage,  by  a  system  resembling  closely  that  of  Mexico  in  the  days  of 
Porfirio  Diaz.  Except  the  Great  War  should  have  brought  about  radical 
changes  in  Rumania,  the  future  of  the  peasant  will  be,  as  has  been  the  past, 
a  round  of  hard  labor,  life  in  the  hovel  peculiar  of  the  country,  the 
roughest  of  homespuns,  and  mamaliga,  a  dish  of  maize  resembling  polenta — 
the  only  thing  really  that  links  Rumania  to  Italy,  her  so-called  mother 
country. 

Though  the  Rumanians,  especially  the  upper  classes,  are  fond  of 
claiming  themselves  Romans,  the  fact  is  that  they  are  Romanized  Dacians 
in  the  hills,  and  in  the  plains  the  descendants  of  all  the  peoples  that 
have  swept  in  and  out  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  to  refer  to  a  few  of 
them:  Slavs,  Goths,  Huns,  Gepides,  Avars,  Kelts  and  Bulgars.  Through 
later  immigration  a  fairly  strong  Turkish  element  came  into  the  country. 

Little  is  known  of  the  history  of  Rumania  before  and  immediately 
after  its  more  or  less  complete  organization  by  Emperor  Trajan.  It 
seems  that  even  then  Rumania  was  backward. 

The  modern  state  had  its  inception  in  two  principalities,  founded  by 
Radu  Negru,  the  one,  and  Bogdan,  the  other,  about  1292.  During  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries  the  country  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Turks, 
while  from  the  end  of  the  latter  to  1829  Russia  and  Austria  lost  and  retook 
the  territory.  Tn  that  year  Rumania  was  placed  under  the  protection  of 
Russia,  but  the  suzerainty  of  Turkey  was  still  recognized.  In  1848  the 
inhabitants  were  affected  a  little  by  the  wave  of  liberalism  which  swept 
over  Europe  and  rose  in  revolt.     The  consequence  was  that  the  country 

199 


200  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

was  occupied  by  Russian  troops,  who,  from  1854  to  1856,  were  displaced 
by  Austrian  forces,  in  which  latter  year  the  Russian  protectorate  was 
removed  from  the  country  by  the  Treaty  of  Paris.  Shortly  afterward 
the  Rumanians  in  the  two  principalities,  into  which  the  country  was  then 
divided,  Moldawa  and  Wallachia,  decided  upon  the  same  prince,  who,  in 
1861,  united  the  country  into  modern  Rumania.  In  1864  Prince  Karl  of 
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen  was  elected  ruler. 

During  the  Russo-Turkish  War  of  1877-78  Rumania  declared  herself 
independent  of  Turkey,  and  the  Congress  of  Berlin  sowed  here  another 
apple  of  discord  by  ceding  the  Rumanian  Bessarabia  to  Russia  and  the 
predominantly  Bulgarian  Dobrudja  to  Rumania  as  compensation.  In  1881 
Rumania  proclaimed  herself  a  kingdom,  having  a  short  time  before  that 
declared  her  church  an  autocephalic  institution.  The  Rumanian  language 
is  of  a  general  Roman  character,  but  has  retained  many  archaic,  and  incor- 
porated a  large  number  of  Slavic,  elements. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War  M.  Bratianu,  whose  father  had 
served  Rumania  valiantly  against  the  Turks,  with  Alexander  II,  the  Czar 
Liberator  of  the  Balkans,  was  at  the  head  of  the  Rumanian  government  as 
premier.  Rumania  had  a  treaty  of  alliance  with  Austria-Hungary,  a 
condition  which  led  to  the  calling  of  a  crown  council  in  August  of  the  first 
War  year  at  which  it  was  considered  whether  or  no  Rumania  should  enter 
the  great  struggle.  It  is  asserted  that  Senator  Alexandru  Marghiloman, 
who  had  formerly  served  in  the  ministry,  and  who  was  still  the  leader  of 
the  Conservative  Party,  was  for  entrance  into  the  War  on  the  side  of 
Austria-Hungary.  In  this  he  would  seem  to  have  had  the  support  of  Peter 
Carp,  a  former  premier,  and  associated  with  him  at  the  time  in  the  leader- 
ship of  the  Conservatives.  M.  Filipescu,  formerly  minister  of  war ;  Take 
Jonescu,  a  prominent  lawyer,  and  Michael  Cantacuzene,  were  the  leaders 
of  those  who  opposed  joining  the  Central  Powers.  The  premier,  M. 
Bratianu,  was  unable,  it  seems,  to  make  up  his  mind.  King  Charles  favored 
coming  to  the  assistance  of  Austria-Hungary  and  Germany,  with  the 
reincorporation  of  Bessarabia  in  prospect  in  case  the  Central  Powers  won. 
The  council,  being  unable  to  agree,  dissolved  and  shortly  afterward 
Rumania  was  in  the  throes  of  as  wild  a  propaganda  campaign  as  any 
country  saw  during  the  Great  War. 

Diplomatic  Constellations  at  Bucharest 

This  campaign  was  at  its  height  when  I  arrived  at  Bucharest.  The 
country,  that  is,  Bucharest,  the  capital,  was  divided  into  two  factions  that 
fought  as  if  Rumania  herself  were  already  one  of  the  belligerents.  The 
Filipescu- Jonescu  combination  had  been  joined  by  Toma  Jonescu,  Con- 


DIPLOMATIC  CONSTELLATIONS  AT  BUCHAREST      201 

stantin  Mille,  and  a  large  number  of  other  prominent  politicians,  most  of 
whom  belonged  to  the  Conservative  Democratic  Party,  while  the  Mar- 
ghiloman-Carp  group  had  been  similarly  augmented  with  such  men  as 
Majorescu,  Octavian  Gogo,  Nicolae  Jorga,  politicians,  and  Alexandru  Tzi- 
gara-Samurcas,  director  of  the  Carol  Foundation  and  National  Art  Mu- 
seum ;  Rector  Stere,  of  the  University  of  Jassy,  and  Pater  Dr.  Lucacin,  a 
prominent  clerical. 

The  active  leadership  was  in  the  hands  of  Take  Jonescu,  for  the 
Ententeophiles,  and  Senator  Marghiloman,  for  the  Germanophiles.  Most 
of  the  telling  press  work  for  the  first  group  was  done  by  Constantin 
Mille,  owner  and  chief  editor  of  the  two  most  prominent  Bucharest  dailies, 
the  Adeverul  and  Dimineatcha.  Peter  Carp  attended  to  the  propaganda  in 
his  camp  in  his  personally  conducted  Moldawa.  The  remainder  of  the 
Rumanian  press,  with  many  dailies  in  French  as  constituents,  was  in  the 
market  from  time  to  time,  sold  out  and  changed  masters  without  notice  at 
the  behest  of  the  highest  bidders.  The  Adeverul  and  Dimineatcha  differed 
from  all  other  papers  in  so  far  that  they  were  bound  to  the  Russian 
legation  by  long-term  agreements.  M.  Poklevski-Koziell,  the  Russian 
minister  at  Bucharest,  was  not  the  brightest  mind  in  the  diplomatic  world, 
of  course,  but  he  knew  that  the  press  can  accomplish  much,  even  in 
Rumania.  His  military  attache,  Col.  Tatarinoflf,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a 
born  diplomatist,  which  was  just  as  well,  since  Sir  H.  Barclay,  the  British 
minister,  and  M.  Blondel,  the  French  envoy,  were  hardly  the  men  whom 
a  government  should  send  out  on  the  streets  on  a  dark  night.  Diplomacy 
was  not  their  forte  by  any  means,  both  of  them  being  honest  men. 

It  was  rather  better  in  the  camp  of  the  Central  Power  diplomatists. 
In  Count  Czernin  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was  well  represented, 
and  in  Baron  Hilmar  von  den  Bussche-Haddenhausen  the  German  govern- 
ment could  place  all  confidence.  The  latter  was  ably  supported  by  a  very 
young  man  by  name  of  W.  von  Rheinbaben,  which  is  of  no  particular 
consequence,  except  in  so  far  as  it  goes  to  show  that  the  able  diplo- 
matist is  woefully  handicapped  when  it  comes  to  arguing  against  superior 
strength. 

To  run  even  a  partial  list  of  all  the  propagandists  whom  I  met  in  a 
single  fortnight  in  Bucharest  is  quite  impossible.  In  the  hotels  every 
room  was  occupied  by  an  agent  of  some  sort  from  any  of  the  warring 
countries  of  Europe.  In  the  more  pretentious  Palace  Athene  dwelled  the 
chiefs  of  these  agents,  some  of  whom  took  keen  delight  in  taking  suites 
for  the  mere  fun  of  keeping  some  propagandist  of  an  enemy  country  out. 

This,  then,  was  the  setting  of  the  diplomatic  stage  in  the  Rumanian 
capital.    And  this  the  play : 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  Rumania  irredenta.     The  Congress  of 


202  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Berlin,  1878,  had  given  to  Russia  a  district  settled  largely  by  Rumanians: 
Bessarabia.  Austria-Hungary  had  never  again  disgorged  the  Rumanian 
population  in  Transylvania,  and  the  eastern  Banat,  and  there  were  those 
who  thought  that  Bulgaria  should  lose  still  more  of  the  Dobrudja.  The 
extremists  even  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  Kutzo-Vlakhs  on  the 
southwestern  outskirts  of  Macedonia  ought  to  be  returned  to  the  main 
body  of  Vlakhs — the  Rumanians.  Last  but  not  least,  the  Rumanians  in 
the  Bukowina  were  thought  necessary  to  the  mother  country. 

It  depended  entirely  upon  what  camp  one  was  in  before  expression 
could  be  made  as  to  which  of  the  Rumania  irredenta  districts  should  be 
reincorporated  first.  Feeling  ran  so  high  that  neither  side  could  afford 
to  totally  ignore  the  ambitions  of  the  other.  The  Ententophile  faction 
announced  openly  that  Transylvania  and  the  Banat  would  have  to  be 
annexed  in  toto,  although  there  was  a  large  ethnographic  twilight  zone 
about  both  districts,  not  to  mention  the  large  German  population  on  the 
Burzen  Plain,  in  and  around  Kronstadt,  Hermannstadt  and  Klausenburg, 
which  had  been  brought  into  that  part  of  Transylvania,  in  the  twelfth 
century,  from  the  valley  of  the  (Moselle,  the  Palatinate,  Wuerttemberg 
and,  to  a  minor  degree,  from  Saxony,  though  the  latter  country  gave  its 
name  to  these  immigrants,  to  wit:  Sachsen. 

In  the  Banat  ethnology  was  equally  involved.  As  in  Transylvania, 
so  was  the  population  in  this  instance  a  very  mixed  one.  In  both  terri- 
tories there  is  a  strong  Magyar  element,  and  in  the  Banat,  especially  the 
southwestern  parts  of  it,  the  "Serbo-Croat"  population  is  decidedly  numer- 
ous, a  fact  which  was  not  overlooked  later  in  the  treaty  made  by  Bratianu 
and  the  Allied  governments,  which  provided  that  the  Slavs  in  the  Banat 
should  be  given  two  years  in  which  to  dispose  of  their  property  for  a 
fair  compensation  before  departing  for  Jugo-Slavia  or  other  parts,  if  they 
wished  to  do  that. 

The  Germanophile  politicians  did  not  allow  their  opponents  to  forget 
that  there  was  a  Bessarabia,  which  actually  clamored  for  admission  into 
Rumania,  as  was  claimed.  Considering  what  the  lot  of  the  Rumanian 
peasant  was,  I  have  always  taken  the  eagerness  of  the  Bessarabians  to 
join  Rumania,  as  advertised,  cum  grano  salis.  But  this  particular  piece 
of  Rumania  irredenta  was  used  to  make  the  arguments  of  the  Ententophile 
camp  illogical.  The  result  was  that  the  Jonescu-Filipescu  camp  replied 
that  Russia  would  cede  Bessarabia  later,  a  statement  which  is  not  borne 
out  by  the  terms  of  the  treaty  to  which  reference  has  been  made.  The 
friends  of  the  Entente  in  Rumania  said  little  enough  about  further  an- 
nexations in  the  Dobrudja.  To  do  that  would  have  been  highly  impolitic, 
since  the  Bulgarians,  most  resentful  of  having  lost  a  part  of  the  district 
by  the  Sazonovian  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  1913,  would  have  been  heard  from. 


DIPLOMATIC  CONSTELLATIONS  AT  BUCHAREST      203 

Only  the  Neo-Idealists  of  Rumania  mentioned  the  Vlakhs  in  that  part  of 
Bulgaria,  and  in  Macedonia. 

Nor  could  the  Cermanophile  leaders  overlook  entirely  the  districts 
which  the  Ententophiles  claimed.  The  program  of  the  Marghiloman-Carp 
camp  was  to  annex  all  of  Bessarabia,  do  the  best  possible  with  Austria- 
Hungary  in  Transylvania  and  the  Banat  and  leave  the  Dobrudja  and  the 
Klutzo-Vlakhs  alone. 

Back  of  the  ^'Coulisses  Diplomatiques" 

A  week  in  Bucharest  had  left  my  mind  rather  confused  on  these 
burning  questions  of  the  day.  The  service  with  which  I  was  connected 
had  specifically  instructed  me  to  "study"  the  situation  in  Rumania,  and 
the  Balkans,  and  here  I  should  mention  that  the  Rumanian  is  mortally 
offended  when  one  suggests  that  he  is  of  the  Balkan.  Such  being  the 
case,  and  being  of  an  inquisitive  turn  of  mind  by  nature,  I  undertook  an 
automobile  tour  through  Rumania  and  her  irredentas.  That  done,  I  was 
in  better  position  to  listen  to  what  the  several  leaders  of  the  two  camps 
had  to  say. 

My  first  interview  was  with  Constantin  Mille,  the  owner  and  chief 
editor  of  the  Adeverul  and  Dimineatcha.  M.  Mille  speaks  French  fluently, 
has  lived  in  France  now  and  then,  and  in  the  course  of  a  fairly  long  life 
as  redacteur  and  Deputy  of  "Parliamentul"  has  acquired  a  glibness  of 
expression  and  inclination  toward  generality  and  platitude  which  I  found 
a  little  irritating.  When  one  newspaperman  talks  to  another  a  certain 
adherence  to  the  facts  is  expected,  though  the  result  of  that  is  not  neces- 
sarily for  publication. 

M.  Mille  did  not  know  that  I  had  made  a  tour  of  the  ''provinces," 
and  he  spoke,  therefore,  of  Rumania  as  a  sort  of  Paradise  Forgotten.  I 
listened  to  him  for  some  time,  and  then  wrung  from  him  the  admission 
that  after  all  there  was  some  room  for  social  improvement  in  Rumania, 
to  which  he  added  that  as  a  Liberal  he  had  always  labored  ardently  for 
the  betterment  of  the  life  of  the  peasant. 

I  asked  M.  Mille  whether  or  no  it  was  true  that  in  the  recent  peasant 
uprising  some  ten  thousand  insurrectos  had  been  shot.  He  said  that  the 
number  was  probably  not  as  great  as  all  that,  but  a  good  many  had  been 
shot  and  fusilladed.  In  the  end  M.  Mille  admitted — I  am  using  his  own 
words — that  the  Rumanian  peasant  still  lived  "in  the  age  of  the  troglodyte." 
That  was  better. 

The  conditions  I  had  met  in  the  rural  districts — and  Rumania  is  almost 
all  rural — were  exactly  what  the  great  editor  described  them  now.  The 
family  lived  in  a  hovel,  half  under  the  ground,  and  shared  that  hovel  with 


204  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  few  domestic  animals  it  possessed.  It  subsisted  on  mamaliga,  a  pelagra 
promoting  dish  of  corn  throughout  the  year,  getting  meat  once  a  week 
at  the  very  best,  and  clothing  itself  in  the  crudest  of  raiment — a  single 
garment  in  the  majority  of  cases. 

Not  enough  with  that,  the  family  was  owned  by  the  boyar  on  whose 
land  it  lived.  In  return  for  its  labor  the  family  was  given  the  use  of 
a  few  acres  of  land,  the  produce  of  which  had  to  keep  it.  Since  in 
good  weather  the  peasant  was  obliged  to  labor  on  the  crops  of  his  owner, 
he  raised  generally  very  little,  and  rapacity  was  carried  so  far  that  the 
family  had  to  pay  for  the  privilege  of  pasturing  the  cow,  if  it  had  one. 
In  all  respects  the  Rumanian  peasant  lived  on  a  par  with  the  Mexican 
peon,  with  this  difference:  The  climate  of  Mexico  is  better,  and  the  peon 
can  afford  clean  cotton  pants,  which  the  Rumanian  peasant  cannot. 

In  five  villages  I  found  one  human  being  that  claimed  ability  to 
read  and  write.  When  I  tested  the  man  I  discovered  that  he  had  forgotten 
all  he  ever  knew.  I  gained  the  impression  that  he  was  ashamed  to  own 
that  he  could  neither  read  nor  write  and  that  he  lied  to  me  in  behalf  of 
self-respect,  for  of  that  the  Rumanian  has  a  great  deal.  Though  the  custom 
of  the  lex  prima  noctis  was  being  frowned  upon  in  Rumania  now,  I  found 
that  the  overlord  so  minded,  at  any  rate  his  sons,  still  availed  themselves 
of  it  in  all  cases  where  the  young  woman  seemed  desirable. 

I  mentioned  some  of  these  things  to  M.  Mille,  and  thereby  put  him 
on  the  defensive.  Yes,  it  was  all  very  true!  The  Rumanian  peasant, 
unfortunately,  was  still  in  the  "age  troglodytien,"  and  it  was  hoped  that 
the  Rumanians  in  Transylvania  and  the  Banat,  who  were  "progressive," 
would  serve  as  a  leaven  to  raise  the  soggy  mass  in  the  mother  country. 
It  occurred  to  me  that  the  Rumanians  in  question  might  become  just  as 
soggy  if  placed  under  the  rule  of  the  men  in  Bucharest.  M.  Mille  thought 
that  was  out  of  the  question. 

The  chief  editor  of  the  Dimineatcha,  the  afternoon  edition  of  the 
Adeverul,  M.  Branisteanu,  a  Rumanian  Jew,  was  inclined  to  agree  with 
me  rather  than  with  his  chief,  M.  Mille,  but  he  did  that  only  when  he  was 
away  from  the  great  editor,  reformer  and  deputy. 

On  the  same  afternoon  I  called  on  Mr.  Take  Jonescu.  He,  too,  took 
it  for  granted  that  Rumania  was  still  terra  incognita  to  me,  as,  indeed, 
to  quite  an  extent  it  still  was.  Mr.  Jonescu,  whose  wife,  by  the  way, 
is  a  very  clever  English  woman,  outlined  to  me  what  I  have  already  given 
as  the  outline  of  the  Ententophile  camp  in  Rumania.  Transylvania  and 
the  Banat  would  have  to  be  returned  to  Rumania,  he  said,  and  if  in  the 
course  of  that  process  a  few  millions  of  Germans,  Magyars  and  Slavs 
passed  under  Rumanian  rule  that  could  not  be  helped.  Those  who  found 
the  government  of  Bucharest  unbearable  could  emigrate.    There  was  to  be 


BACK  OF  THE  COULISSES  DIPLOMATIQUBS  205 

a  Rumania  mare,  a  Greater  Rumania,  and  to  fashion  that  it  would  be 
necessary  to  join  the  Entente  group  of  belHgerents. 

Mr.  Jonescu,  besides  being  a  very  good  lawyer,  with  an  especially 
evil  reputation  in  inheritance  cases,  is  also  a  journalist,  being  one  of  the 
contributors  to  many  of  the  Entente-controlled  newspapers  in  Rumania 
at  that  time,  particularly  the  Ziua,  of  which  a  M.  Slavitchi  was  at  that  time 
the  editor-in-chief. 

Being  familiar  with  journalism,  and  laboring  under  the  impression — 
not  so  misapplied  at  any  time — that  the  average  American  newspaper- 
man is  the  poorest  hand  at  quoting  people  correctly,  Mr.  Jonescu  insisted 
that  he  write  his  own  interview.  I  was  to  come  back  at  six  o'clock  and 
get  it. 

Upon  my  return  he  handed  me  a  long  statement,  done  in  excellent 
English,  possibly  by  Mme.  Jonescu.  I  read  the  several  sheets  of  paper, 
and  then  had  to  inform  Mr.  Jonescu  that  I  could  not  use  all  of  the 
matter,  since  cable  tolls  to  the  United  States  were  rather  heavy.  At 
that  the  good  man  took  umbrage  and  said  that  I  would  have  to  use  all 
of  it  or  none.  Later  I  used  what  I  pleased,  because  our  dealing  had 
clearly  enough  established  that  Mr.  Jonescu  did  not  mind  being  quoted 
if  he  could  be  quoted  in  his  own  way — which  way  was  too  expensive. 

The  discussions  I  had  with  these  men  had  led  to  mention  of  Russia, 
of  course.  Messrs.  Mille  and  Jonescu  were  sure  that  the  Russian  govern- 
ment— this  was  in  January,  1915 — would  be  reasonable  in  connection  with 
Rumania's  interests  in  the  Black  Sea  and  Dardanelles.  There  was  no 
doubt  that  Russia  would  be  established  in  Constantinople  before  the 
War  was  very  much  older.  The  Muscovite  empire  needed  a  window  upon 
the  high  seas  very  badly,  and  presently  that  window  would  be  broken 
into  the  walls  that  surrounded  Russia.  Since  the  Russian  minister,  M. 
Poklewski-Koziell,  had  said  as  much  to  a  Rumanian  journalist  who  was 
assisting  me,  and  since  a  danseuse  who  was  on  the  most  intimate  terms 
with  an  attache  of  the  Russian  legation  had  been  more  specific,  the  immi- 
nent possibility  of  an  attack  on  the  Dardanelles  by  the  Entente  was  brought 
to  my  attention. 

How  Senator  Marghiloman  Saw  It 

Mr.  Charles  J.  Vopicka,  the  United  States  minister  at  Bucharest, 
had  meanwhile  introduced  me  to  Senator  Alexandru  Marghiloman.  The 
first  time  we  met  at  the  Jockey  Club,  and  while  I  watched  the  gaming  that 
was  going  on,  and  in  which  the  senator  was  a  keen  participant,  I  managed 
my  first  interview.  There  being  others  about,  Mr.  Marghiloman  was  rather 
reserved.     But  he  informed  me  that  for  luncheon  he  kept  open  house 


206  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

throughout  the  week,  Sundays  excepted  in  favor  of  his  family,  and  that 
he  would  like  me  to  drop  in  any  day.  En  passant,  I  wish  to  mention  that 
this  is  one  of  the  Roman  customs  which  the  Rumanians  have  perpetuated — 
not  a  bad  one  for  the  politician  and  for  those  who  may  have  dealing  with 
him.     I  suggest  it  as  a  substitute  for  the  bar  "free  lunch." 

After  luncheon  at  the  Villa  Marghiloman,  which  still  bore  marks  of 
an  attack  which  Ententophile  students  and  members  of  the  rabble  had  made 
upon  it,  Mr.  Marghiloman  and  I  took  several  rounds  in  the  solarium  and 
discussed  the  political  situation. 

The  senator's  keynote  was  that  Rumania  would  have  to  stay  out  of 
the  European  War.  If  she  got  involved  at  all,  as  her  impetuous  statesmen 
hoped  she  would,  entry  at  the  very  last  minute  alone  could  be  recom- 
mended. Speaking  of  the  attack  on  the  villa,  which  was  synchronized  with  an 
attack  on  the  royal  palace  on  the  Galea  Victoriei,  the  senator  protested  that  he 
was  not  pro-Cerman,  as  had  been  charged  by  his  political  enemies,  but  that 
he  was  decidedly  pro-Rumanian.  He  regretted  that  a  time  had  come 
when  to  love  one's  own  country  had  to  be  interpreted  as  being  anti-this 
or  pro-that.  He  was  not  so  sure  that  the  Entente  would  defeat  the 
Central  Powers,  despite  the  fact  that  just  then  the  Russians  were  making 
good  headway  in  the  Carpathians. 

Senator  Marghiloman  pointed  out  to  me  that  he  spoke  French  much 
better  than  German,  which  I  found  to  be  the  case,  that  usually  he  spent 
the  better  part  of  the  year  either  in  Paris  or  at  the  Riviera,  having  estab- 
lishments at  both  points,  and  that  he  raced  his  horses  in  France,  had  a 
chasse  there,  and  had  most  of  his  money  invested  in  French  securities. 
This,  and  the  fact  that  his  library  was  to  within  a  small  percentage  entirely 
French,  and  the  fact  also  that  he  was  in  no  need  of  money  from  any 
government,  being  one  of  the  wealthiest  Rumanians,  caused  me  to  look 
upon  the  former  minister  of  finance  as  a  man  who  had  good  reasons  for 
his  attitude. 

King  Carlos  had  meanwhile  died — from  grief  due  to  the  conduct 
of  the  Bucharestian  mob,  and  his  queen,  Elizabeth,  better  known  as  Carmen 
Sylva,  was  away  from  the  capital,  praying  at  the  tomb  of  her  late  husband 
for  the  repose  of  his  soul.  The  new  king,  Ferdinand,  was  neither  this 
nor  that,  and  his  queen,  Marie,  as  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh, 
as  granddaughter  of  Queen  Victoria,  and  as  daughter  of  the  Grand  Duchess 
Marie  of  Russia,  was  doing  her  best  to  give  Bratianu,  the  minister  presi- 
dent, every  incentive  to  make  up  his  mind  in  favor  of  the  Entente. 

Senator  Marghiloman,  therefore,  occupied  somewhat  the  position  of 
the  lone  fisherman.  When,  in  the  face  of  these  conditions,  he  persisted  in 
retaining  the  attitude  that  was  his,  he  was  sure  to  have  a  special  reason 
for  this.    I  found  this  reason  to  be  the  uncertainty  of  things,  and  his  fear 


HOW  SENATOR  MARGHILOMAN  SAW  IT  207 

that  it  would  not  be  well  with  Rumania  in  case  the  Russian  government, 
especially  Sazonoff,  was  able  to  carry  into  "realization"  Russian  "desires" 
in  the  direction  of  the  Dardanelles. 

Senator  Marghiloman  had  a  sort  of  slogan. 

"Rumania  must  remain  at  peace  with  all  of  her  neighbors,"  it  was. 

He  told  me  that  he  had  never  voiced  a  desire  to  see  Bessarabia  annexed 
to  Rumania  under  conditions  that  were  bound  to  earn  for  his  country 
the  illwill  of  Russia.  Bessarabia  should  belong  to  Rumania,  he  said,  but 
what  was  the  use  of  thinking  of  that  so  long  as  there  was  no  assurance 
that  Rumania  could  keep  what  she  took,  nor  avoid  being  later  penalized 
for  her  act,  besides.  That  was  sound  logic — a  fine  specimen  of  "Real- 
politik." 

Though  some  shouters,  taking  too  great  an  interest  in  the  afifairs 
of  the  Central  Powers,  were  loud  in  their  claims  on  Bessarabia,  as  loud 
as  their  opponents  were  in  their  clamoring  for  Transylvania  and  the 
Banat,  it  would  be  a  grave  situation  for  Rumania  if  the  Russian  govern- 
ment ever  came  to  take  such  matters  seriously.  Nor  did  the  senator  have 
as  good  an  opinion  of  the  help  Rumania  could  bring  to  either  side,  as 
others  were  persisting  in.  He  said  that  the  Rumanian  army,  while  it  could 
easily  muster  half  a  million  men  in  the  prime  of  life,  was  too  poorly  organ- 
ized and  equipped,  too  poorly  led  and  trained,  to  be  of  much  consequence 
anywhere.  The  ammunition  at  the  disposal  of  the  Rumanian  government 
would  last  two  weeks.  There  was  not  enough  artillery  and  the  mechanical 
department  of  the  government  arsenal,  recently  installed,  was  virtually  use- 
less because  the  materials  for  the  manufacture  of  munitions  could  not  be 
had.  General  Iliescu,  the  chief  of  staff,  was  incompetent,  moreover,  said 
the  former  minister  of  finance.  All  in  all  it  would  be  best  to  stay  out  of 
the  War. 

But,  said  he,  there  was  one  aspect  of  the  situation  which  ultimately 
might  drive  Rumania  into  the  camp  of  the  Central  Powers.  If  Russia 
succeeded  the  Turks  in  control  of  the  Dardanelles  nothing  would  be  gained 
by  Rumania.  It  was  his  understanding  that  this  was  the  plan  of  the 
Entente  governments. 

Then  and  there  I  learned  what  that  plan  was,  as  I  have  already  inti- 
mated in  one  of  the  opening  chapters.  Marghiloman  had  his  own  agents 
in  Germany  and  Russia,  and  possibly  was  in  correspondence  with  persons 
in  France,  Great  Britain,  Italy  and  Austria-Hungary,  as  I  surmised  from 
what  he  told  me  on  this  and  a  later  occasion.  What  the  price  to  the 
Entente  of  Russia's  unstinted  military  support  would  be  was  as  clear  to 
Senator  Marghiloman  as  if  he  had  read  the  text  of  the  agreement  which 
a  little  later  was  actually  made.  M.  Marghiloman  even  then  knew  every 
provision,  and  what  leaning  toward  the  Central  Powers  he  showed  was 


208  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

due  to  his  knowledge.  He  did  not  then  understand  that,  treaty  or  no 
treaty,  Great  Britain  could  not  afford  to  have  Russia  supreme  on  the 
straits. 

With  Russia  in  control  of  the  Dardanelles,  Rumania  would  not  for 
long  remain  independent  economically,  and  after  that  the  country  would 
eventually  become  a  Russian  dependency  in  the  political  sense  proper.  The 
principal  export  of  Rumania  was  cereals,  mostly  wheat  and  maize.  In 
this  department  she  was  the  rival  of  Russia,  as  the  keen  competition 
of  the  Braila,  Rumania,  and  Odessa  grain  exchanges  had  already  shown. 

The  assurance  of  the  British  and  French  governments  that  the  Bos- 
phorus,  Sea  of  Marmora  and  Dardanelles  would  be  free  to  traffic  not 
originating  in,  or  going  to,  Russia,  was  well  enough,  thought  the  former 
minister  of  finance.  But  with  Russia  enthroned  in  Constantinople  the 
aspects  of  such  things  might  change.  With  this  Greater  Russia  a  defeated 
Central  Europe  would  not  take  up  an  issue  on  the  Dardanelles,  nor  would 
French  and  British  statesmen,  guilty  of  such  an  indiscretion  as  placing 
Russia  in  possession  of  the  single  avenue  to  and  from  a  sea  upon  which 
other  nations,  besides  Russia,  depended,  be  likely  to  undo  their  bargain 
after  a  war  that  would  cost  them  a  great  deal  no  matter  how  much  they 
would  gain  from  it. 

If  the  Russian  government,  especially  if  still  in  the  hands  of  a  Sazonoff, 
did  not  openly  defy  the  stipulations  of  her  agreement,  to  which  Rumania 
was  no  contracting  party,  by  the  way,  and  which  at  a  pinch  could  have 
been  interpreted  as  applying  to  British  and  French  vessels  only,  it  would 
find  some  good  pretext  to  discriminate  against  Rumania.  For  instance, 
the  channel  at  Nagara,  the  Inner  Dardanelles,  needed  improvement.  The 
Turks  had  not  blasted  the  rock  ledges  out  of  the  way  because  these  were 
rather  useful  in  the  defense  and  control  of  the  strait  and  its  shipping, 
necessitating  the  stopping  of  merchantmen  in  Sari  Siglar  Bay  if  they 
entered  the  strait  late  in  the  day.  The  same  ledges  made  a  dash  of  a 
hostile  fleet  past  the  forts  extremely  hazardous.  To  blast  these  rocks  out 
of  the  way  would  be  simple  enough.  Russia  would  not  need  their  protec- 
tion so  long  as  the  entrance  of  the  Dardanelles  had  been  sufficiently  fortified. 
What  could  be  more  inviting  than  to  clear  the  channel  and  find  in  this 
improvement  the  moral  basis  for  limiting  the  rights  of  foreign  shipping 
in  a  waterway  which  occupancy  of  the  adjoining  territory  by  Russia  would 
make  Russian  anyway.  The  Dardanelles  would  be  strictly  Russian  terri- 
torial waters  after  that,  and  the  Black  Sea  a  mare  clausum,  or  inland  lake 
of  Russia. 

Thus  reasoned  Senator  Marghiloman.  It  would  be  hard  to  deny  that 
logic  was  on  his  side.  The  publication  of  the  Russo-Franco-British  entente 
on  this  subject  later  on  shows  how  well  the  senator  was  informed  and  how 


HOW  SENATOR  MARGHILOMAN  SAW  IT  209 

just  his  conclusions  were,  so  long  as  the  treaty  was  accepted  at  its  face 
value. 

I  suggested  to  him  that  with  the  Dardanelles  no  longer  absolutely  free 
to  Rumania,  the  produce  of  her  fields  might  be  exported  to  Central 
Europe  over  the  Danube  and  the  railroads.  That  could  be  done,  was 
the  reply,  but  to  get  a  good  price  for  her  grain  Rumania  depended  upon 
an  unrestricted  market.  If  the  people  of  Central  Europe  knew  that  Ru- 
mania was  obliged  to  sell  her  wheat  and  maize  to  them  they  might  apply 
such  discrimination  as  had  been  the  lot  of  the  Serbs  at  the  hands  of  the 
Austrians.  There  was  but  one  really  good  market  for  Rumanian  grain 
in  Central  Europe  and  that  was  Germany.  But  to  reach  Germany  the 
railroads  of  Hungary  and  her  sister  state  Austria  had  to  be  used,  and 
in  that  way  Rumanian  grain  exports  would  have  been  subject  to  railroad 
tariff  discrimination  if  to  no  other.  To  the  mineral  oil  products  of  Ru- 
mania applied  the  same  arguments,  the  senator  pointed  out.  In  short,  the 
outlook  upon  the  future  by  Rumania  was  not  the  best. 

M.  Marghiloman  had  been  active  in  the  peace  conference  at  Bucharest, 
of  1913,  and  knew  the  quality  of  mind  of  Sazonoff,  the  Russian  minister 
of  foreign  affairs.  He  also  knew  that  the  Russians  had  favored  the  Serbs 
for  a  purpose,  and  while,  as  a  Rumanian,  he  had  readily  accepted  a  part 
of  the  Dobrudja,  which  the  attitude  toward  Bulgaria  of  the  Russian 
government  had  left  in  the  hands  of  the  Rumanian  government,  he  was 
not  wholly  pleased  now  with  that  attitude,  regretting,  in  fact,  that  the 
Treaty  of  Bucharest  had  taken  the  form  it  had.  Of  Serbia  Rumania 
had  no  fear.  It  was  Serbia's  great  ally,  Russia,  that  set  on  edge  the  teeth 
of  the  former  Rumanian  minister  of  finance.  Jugo-Slavism  was  a  fact. 
The  War  might  bring  a  Jugoslavia,  and  then  a  Unislavia  under  the  aegis 
of  the  Romanoffs  and  Sazonoff s  in  Petrograd.  That  Zarigrad  on  the 
Golden  Horn  might  again  be  Nova  Roma,  from  which  the  nations  in 
all  Europe  would  have  to  take  their  orders,  to  which  they  might  have  to 
pay  tribute  in  fact. 

For  the  very  dignified  combat  which  Senator  Marghiloman  continued 
to  give  the  Jonescu-Filipescu  group,  these  views  were  the  base.  The 
unbridled  ambition  of  Sazonoff  and  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholai  Nicholaie- 
vitch  had  in  Senator  Marghiloman  and  Peter  Carp  two  able,  although 
rather  impotent,  opponents. 


A  Neutrality  of  Several  Parts 

Minister-President  Bratianu  observed  a  sphinx-like  attitude,  mean- 
while. In  making  several  attempts  to  see  him  I  never  got  further  than 
his  private  secretary.     From  that  functionary,  a  very  important  one,  by 


210  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  way,  I  learned  that  strictest  neutrality  was  the  objective  of  the  head 
of  the  government. 

But  that  neutrality  did  not  get  far  beyond  the  executive  office,  I  am 
afraid,  if  it  was  to  be  found  within  it  at  all.  Rumania  was  neutral  only  in 
so  far  as  the  fighting  between  two  factions  of  "antis"  could  make  it.  At 
Reni  the  Russian  government  had  established  a  base  for  the  Serbian 
army,  under  the  command  of  Admiral  Vesselkine.  From  that  point  was 
shipped  over  the  Danube  whatever  the  Serbs  needed,  and  since  they  needed 
almost  everything  an  army  has  use  for,  the  traffic  was  large. 

The  internationalization  of  the  river,  under  the  Danube  Commission, 
gave  Russian  vessels  the  right  to  proceed  as  far  as  they  could,  in  face  of 
the  Austro-Hungarian  artillery  above  the  Iron  Gates,  but  the  Rumanian 
government  closed  its  eyes  whenever  its  own  territoriality  and  its  railroads 
entered  into  the  question.  On  the  other  hand,  the  same  government  was 
lenient  with  trans-Rumanian  traffic  between  Central  Europe  and  Turkey. 
At  least  it  was  not  too  inquisitive  and  much  minor  military  equipment 
reached  Turkey  in  that  manner.  German  officers  and  men,  of  both  the 
naval  and  military  services,  used  the  Rumanian  railroads  to  go  back  and 
forth,  a  practice  which  brought  into  the  Rumanian  foreign  office  many  a 
protest  from  the  Entente  governments.  But  with  the  Germans  travelling 
in  mufti,  and  with  passports  issued  by  the  civil  authorities,  there  was  noth- 
ing to  be  done,  even  though  the  uniforms  of  the  traveller  were  generally 
the  chief  item  of  baggage. 

Such  things  as  could  be  transported  in  sealed  box  cars  went  through 
Rumania  without  question  for  a  time,  but  later  all  cars  were  examined. 
After  that  such  smuggling  of  "contraband"  as  was  possible  in  piano  cases, 
barrels  and  large  boxes  became  the  practice.  But  little  could  be  taken 
to  Turkey  in  that  way,  and  the  articles  needed  most  by  the  Germans  and 
Turks  in  service  on  the  Dardanelles,  large  calibered  guns  and  their  ammu- 
nition, could  not  be  hidden  even  in  piano  cases.  The  Germans  succeeded 
in  getting  through  Rumania  the  more  delicate  parts  of  machinery  that  were 
needed,  when,  under  the  auspices  of  Captain  Piper,  they  established  an 
ammunition  factory  and  a  gun  foundry  on  the  Golden  Horn.  But  even 
that  did  no  serious  damage  to  the  Allies  since  the  ammunition  produced 
was  of  exceedingly  poor  quality,  as  I  was  able  to  establish  myself,  and 
so  far  as  my  knowledge  goes  no  guns  were  ever  made  in  the  foundry. 
Captain  Piper  turning  both  plants  to  the  manufacture,  in  large  quan- 
tities, of  hand  grenades,  in  the  use  of  which  the  Ottoman  infantry  grew 
to  be  expert. 

I  should  state  here,  incidentally,  that  Bulgaria  also  gave  her  railroads 
to  this  traffic.  The  cars  carrying  the  materials  in  question  were  ferried 
across  the  Danube  at  Giurgiu-Rustchuk  and  then  continued  into  Turkey 


A  NEUTRALITY  OF  SEVERAL  PARTS       211 

over  the  Rustchuk-Sofia-Adrianople  railroad  line.  Compared  with  the 
export  of  ammunition  from  the  United  States  this  traffic  was  as  one  to 
thousands.  It  was  always  small  in  volume,  and  the  hue  and  cry  raised 
in  the  Entente  countries  against  these  "shocking  violations"  of  neutrality 
must  strike  mankind  today  as  immensely  funny,  or  should  do  that.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  they  were  arrant  nonsense. 

But  that  was  not  their  only  aspect. 

The  Entente  governments  maintained  in  Bucharest  great  staffs  of  men 
and  women  supposedly  gathering  "military"  information  of  importance. 
Some  of  them  were  serious  people  and  expert  in  their  line.  But  their 
field  was  cluttered  with  a  large  element  that  had  left  home  and  restrain- 
ing family  bonds,  in  the  service  of  the  government  and  for  the  "good" 
of  their  countries,  to  have  a  good  time  in  the  first  instance,  and  to  hold 
the  job  in  the  next.  These  intentions  called  for  an  occasional  effort. 
After  days  and  days  had  been  spent  on  a  tip,  so-called,  the  pursuance  of 
which  had  its  locale  mostly  in  one  of  the  many  Bucharest  cabarets  and 
maisons  de  plaisir,  a  report  would  be  forthcoming,  in  which  the  Rumanian 
government  would  be  charged  with  every  sin  in  the  calendar.  There  had 
been  seen,  on  a  certain  day  in  one  of  the  Bucharest  freight  yards,  or  in 
that  of  some  other  place,  a  whole  train  of  big  guns,  all  covered  with 
black  tarpaulins  and  labelled  Berlin-Constantinople.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  the  author  of  the  report  imagined  all  that.  If  he  did  not  do  that 
himself,  then  some  Rumanian  in  his  service  would  do  it  for  him,  it 
being  with  the  latter  really  a  case  of  bread  and  butter,  or  mamaliga. 

I  arrived  once  in  Bucharest  when  a  very  stiflf  note  had  been  addressed 
to  the  Rumanian  government  by  the  Entente  governments  in  regard  to 
this  misuse  of  Rumanian  territory  by  the  Germans.  It  was  charged  that 
ever  so  many  trainloads  of  guns  and  ammunition  had  gone  southward. 
If  I  recall  the  event  properly  the  note  was  very  specific  and  even  gave  the 
number  of  the  freight  cars  on  which  the  guns  had  been  transported.  An 
investigation  by  the  Rumanian  government  proved  that  the  things  under 
the  black  tarpaulins,  as  specified  in  the  protest,  were  harvesting  ma- 
chinery of  American  origin  going  to  some  point  in  the  Rumanian  Dobrudja. 

The  Value  of  the  "Information  Service** 

Needless  to  say,  government  officials  far  from  the  scene  are  apt  to 
believe  their  agents  before  they  give  much  credence  to  an  innocently  incul- 
pated government,  especially  when  they  wish  to  heap  up  on  things  that 
may  later  be  useful  in  bringing  that  government  into  their  camp.  So 
it  was  in  Rumania.  The  government  could  claim  innocence  and  the  best 
intentions  in  the  world  as  much  as  it  pleased.     In  London,  Paris  and 


212  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Petrograd  that  made  little  impression.  One's  own  "trusted"  agent  would 
not  make  such  a  report  if  he  did  not  know  his  facts.  The  case  was 
somewhat  complicated  by  the  tendency  of  the  Rumanians  to  do,  in  a  per- 
fectly good-natured  way,  little  favors  in  exchange  for  a  few  lei. 

It  came  about  in  this  manner  that  Rumania  got  a  bad  name  and  that 
the  governments  of  the  Entente  received  "military"  information  of  a  very 
doubtful  character. 

When  the  British  Naval  Mission  to  Turkey  left  Constantinople  in 
October,  1914,  it  knew  every  gun  along  the  Dardanelles  and  had  the 
number  of  shells,  of  both  blue-head  and  red-head  variety,  armor-piercing 
and  plain  shell,  down  on  paper.  The  emplacements  along  the  straits  had 
for  months  been  under  British  control,  as  was  the  Ottoman  navy,  and 
for  that  reason  there  were  for  the  British  Admiralty  no  secrets  of  any 
kind  in  the  two  Ottoman  naval  services,  that  is  fleet  and  coast  artillery, 
except  it  be,  and  I  can  hardly  assume  this,  that  Admiral  Limpus  and 
his  officers  were  so  unusually  fair  that  they  refused  to  impart  their  infor- 
mation to  the  British  Admiralty.  Since  such  is  not  likely  to  have  been 
the  case,  we  may  take  it  for  granted  that  the  commander  of  the  Allied 
fleet,  which  bombarded  the  Dardanelles  in  March,  1915,  had  at  his  disposal 
an  accurate  list  of  guns  and  ammunition,  together  with  the  plans  of  every 
battery  along  the  straits. 

Two  things  he  had  to  count  upon.  One  of  them  was  that  the  Ger- 
mans would  rearrange  the  batteries,  abandon  some  of  the  emplacements, 
as  they  did,  and  then  import  greater  guns  and  their  ammunition  from  Ger- 
many. The  latter,  especially,  must  have  been  deemed  probable  by  the 
members  of  the  British  Naval  Mission  to  Turkey,  since  they  knew  well 
enough  how  badly  outranged  and  outclassed  the  artillery  in  the  Dardanelles 
works  was. 

Acting  upon  this  circumstance  and  knowing  that  the  railroad  route 
between  Germany  and  Turkey  was  not  subject  as  yet  to  the  British 
blockade,  knowing  further  that  the  country  of  the  bakshish  begins  with  the 
northern  borders  of  Rumania,  the  British  government  and  admiralty  had 
no  reason  to  be  too  skeptical  of  the  reports  they  were  getting  from  their 
agents  in  Bucharest.  The  stories  sent  home  by  these  agents,  that  ever 
so  many  guns,  and  ever  so  much  ammunition,  was  being  shipped  through 
Rumania  with  the  connivance  of  the  minister  of  railroads,  could  not  be 
disregarded,  of  course,  especially  since  some  traffic  directly  related  to  war 
was  going  on.  On  March  18th,  moreover,  the  fire  of  the  Turkish  coast 
batteries  was  conducted  with  such  prodigality,  considering  the  shells  in  the 
casemates  of  the  emplacements,  that  the  Allied  commander  could  have 
easily  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  Turks  had  shells  of  the  armor- 
piercing  sort  a-plenty.    There  was  also  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have 


THE  VALUE  OF  THE  "INFORMATION  SERVICE"       213 

feared  that  the  Turks  had  more  and  better  guns  than  when  Admiral  Limpus 
left,  since  the  refusal  of  the  Turks  and  Germans  to  measure  issues  at 
long  range  could  have  been  interpreted  as  being  merely  a  strategic  move. 

I  have  no  means  of  knowing  whether  or  no  this  was  the  actual 
reason  for  the  failure  of  the  Allied  fleet  to  follow  up  the  advantages 
gained  on  March  18th.  But  it  is  reasonable  to  believe  that  such  was  the 
case.  Aerial  observation  had  established  that  the  Turkish  emplacements 
were  not  greatly  injured.  Three  battleships  had  been  sunk  by  the  guns 
of  the  Turks,  five  others  had  been  badly  mauled,  and  even  the  "Queen 
Elizabeth,"  terror  of  the  Turkish  coast  batteries,  had  been  forced  to 
limp  out  of  action.  To  the  Allied  commander  no  advantage  that  he  had 
gained  was  observable,  therefore.  The  advantage  in  his  favor  could  not 
be  established  by  reconnaissance  in  the  air,  since  it  was  constituted  of 
empty  ammunition  casemates,  hiding  their  voids  under  sod-covered  parapets. 

A  stay  of  five  weeks,  continuously,  at  Tchanak  Kale,  through  which 
the  only  road  serviceable  for  military  traffic  runs,  daily  visits  to  two  of 
the  emplacements.  Forts  Anadolu  Hamidieh  and  Tchemenlik — one  passes 
through  the  latter  in  going  to  the  first — and  continual  rounds  in  the  works 
at  Kilid-il-Bahr,  Dardanos  and  Erenkoi,  place  me  in  a  position  to  attest 
that  no  new  guns  or  ammunition  from  Germany  had  arrived  as  late  as 
August,  1915,  at  any  of  the  coast  batteries  along  the  straits.  The  changes 
made  consisted  of  a  regroupment  of  material  that  was  in  Turkey  when 
the  British  Naval  Mission  was  still  in  charge,  and  of  the  importation  from 
Germany  of  modern  sighting  apparatus 

When  March  18th  had  demonstrated  that  the  Allied  fleet  meant  to 
force  the  Dardanelles  some  guns  were  added  to  their  defense  system — 
15 -cms  flat-trajectory  pieces  and  howitzers  that  came  not  through  Rumania 
and  Bulgaria  as  charged,  but  from  the  works  in  and  about  Adrianople  and 
from  the  redoubts  of  the  Tchataldja  line.  Since  at  that  moment  there  was 
no  assurance,  so  far  as  the  Ottoman  government  was  concerned,  that 
Bulgaria  might  not  join  Russia  ultimately,  it  ought  to  be  relatively  easy 
to  judge  what  conditions  along  the  Dardanelles  were. 

I  may  mention  in  this  connection  again  that  on  March  19th  the 
Ottoman  government  was  ready  to  leave  Constantinople  for  Eski-Shehir, 
in  Anatolia,  a  city  which  was  the  capital  of  the  Osmanli  before  they  estab- 
lished themselves  in  Europe.  All  treasure  and  records  had  been  loaded 
on  trains  in  Haidar-Pasha  and  were  ready  to  pull  out  on  a  moment's  notice. 
Much  of  the  packing  had  been  done  during  the  two  weeks  preceding  the 
major  attack  on  March  18th. 

While  the  daily  communiquees  of  the  Ottoman  war  office  breathed 
confidence  galore,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Turk  population  and  as  a  warning 
to  the  Armenians  and  Greeks,  the  men  in  Stamboul  knew  well  enough, 


214  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

as  did  those  in  charge  of  the  Dardanelles,  that  it  was  a  case  of  nip  and 
tug  at  the  gates  of  the  Ottoman  capital.  The  actual  increase  of  armament 
along  tlie  straits  before  March  18th,  consisted  of  five  15-cms  rifles,  in  half- 
turrets,  on  the  site  of  the  ancient  city  of  Dardanos,  which,  together  with 
their  ammunition  of  the  armor-penetrating  variety,  had  been  taken  from 
the  German  light  cruiser  "Breslau,"  the  "Middilih,"  companion  of  the 
"Goeben."  The  Turks  and  Germans  had  no  reason  to  hope  that  this  would 
make  any  great  diflFerence  in  the  defense  of  the  straits. 

But  the  Allied  government  had  been  misled  into  the  belief  that  Ru- 
mania had  permitted  large  rifles  and  ammunition  to  be  carried  into  Turkey, 
and  applied  to  that  the  logical  conclusion  that  these  pieces  had  been 
emplaced  at  the  Dardanelles.  With  the  Great  War  still  very  young  then, 
the  losses  suffered  on  March  18th  could  not  be  repeated,  and  so  it  came 
that  the  armada  of  the  British  and  French  withdrew  ingloriously. 

On  the  quality  of  military  information  much  depends  in  war.  To 
have  that  information  accurate  is  difficult  even  when  experts  occupy  them- 
selves with  it.  When  its  collection  is  left  to  crews  of  the  sort  the  Entente 
governments  had  at  Bucharest  anything  may  be  ex])ected.  There  is  no 
class  that  can  be  quite  as  dangerous  as  the  male  and  female  camp- 
followers  of  diplomacy.  The  slightest  rumor  they  hear  becomes  a  fact 
when  it  has  been  reduced  to  the  dignity  of  a  report  in  the  diplomatically- 
privileged  mail  pouch  of  the  ambassador  or  minister. 

The  information  may  be  no  more  than  the  vaporing  of  a  "neutral" 
traveller,  who  has  been  in  the  country  of  the  enemy — hope-inflated  Greeks 
and  Armenians,  in  this  instance.  On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  a  "tip" 
that  was  investigated  and,  according  to  appearances,  verified,  or,  again,  it 
may  be  no  more  than  the  imagination  of  an  agent  whose  predilection  for 
cabarets  and  maisons  de  plaisir  left  him  no  time  to  seriously  occupy  himself 
with  the  mission  entrusted  to  him  and  who,  to  stay  on  the  payroll,  had 
to  invent  "military  information." 

I  have  found  that  the  latter  class  is  the  most  dangerous,  for  the  reason 
that  as  a  rule  its  members  have  the  intelligence  necessary  to  make  their 
reports  very  convincing  and  quite  safe  to  themselves.  Their  prevarication  is 
of  the  most  circumstantial  sort,  and  generally  defies  every  effort  of  excul- 
pating undertaken  by  the  incriminated  authorities.  The  complaining  gov- 
ernment will  under  no  circumstances  admit  that  it  has  agents  in  the  coun- 
try, the  government  of  which  is  drawn  to  account,  nor  will  it  ever  divulge 
identities. 

Perhaps  I  should  state  here  that  already  in  January,  1915,  I  met  in 
Bucharest  an  individual  of  the  latter  class,  whom  a  year  later  I  again 
encountered  there.  The  man  came  to  my  attention  through  his  offer  to 
act  as  my  correspondent  in  Bucharest,  when  I  should  be  away. 


THE  VALUE  OF  THE  "INFORMATION  SERVICE"       215 

While  such  a  man  could  be  very  useful,  I  had  not  the  necessary 
authority  to  make  the  expenditure  involved.  Upon  telling  the  man  as 
much,  he  offered  to  be  very  reasonable  in  his  expectations.  Even  that  I 
could  not  accept.  Several  days  later  he  invaded  my  room  at  the  hotel 
and  offered  to  work  for  nothing  if  I  would  give  him  credentials  as  Asso- 
ciated Press  correspondent.  That  was  a  little  careless  on  his  part.  I 
began  to  question  him  and  learned  that  he  had  a  "private"  source  of 
income  that  permitted  him  to  be  so  magnanimous.  I  held  the  matter  in 
abeyance  until  I  had  satisfied  myself  that  the  man  was  a  rounder  on  Galea 
Victoriei,  went  to  bed  every  morning  at  five  o'clock,  after  spending  the 
night  in  the  cabarets  and  maisons,  and  rose  in  time  to  have  his  feefe  o'clock 
tea  as  his  breakfast.  For  that  some  diplomatic  post  in  Bucharest  paid 
him  enough  to  eat  the  finest  supper  afterward  and  buy  champagne  for  a 
little  chanteuse,  whom  he  also  kept  in  board,  lodging  and  raiment.  I  am 
sure  that  the  best  he  would  have  done  with  my  commission  would  be  its 
presentation  to  some  military  attache  as  further  proof  of  his  wakefulness 
and  zeal  in  ferretting  out  the  dark  secrets  in  Bucharest  and  Rumania. 

A  Diplomatic  Deal  in  Wheat 

That  Premier  Bratianu  had  so  hard  a  time  making  up  his  mind  was 
due  to  the  uncertainty  of  his  position  as  head  of  the  government.  While 
he  was  the  actual  leader  of  the  Conservatives,  Senator  Marghiloman,  and 
Peter  Carp,  the  former  minister-president,  still  had  a  great  personal  fol- 
lowing in  the  party.  M.  Bratianu  was  obliged  to  constantly  reckon  with 
a  change  in  the  government,  though  the  death  of  King  Carlos,  the  pliable- 
ness  of  King  Ferdinand  and  the  efforts  of  Queen  Marie  had  left  him  much 
better  off. 

When  the  Dowager  Queen  Elizabeth,  "Carmen  Sylva,"  passed  away, 
in  February,  1916,  the  last  sentimental  tie  between  the  royal  house  of 
Rumania  and  the  monarchs  at  Vienna  and  Berlin  was  severed.  From  that 
moment  on  the  alliance  between  Austria-Hungary  and  Rumania  was  con- 
sidered as  another  of  the  "scraps  of  paper"  in  Europe.  Meanwhile,  Italy 
had  entered  the  War,  and  in  this  the  Ententophiles  found  another  argument 
why  Rumania  should  join  the  Entente  camp. 

But  the  Marghiloman^Carp  faction  held  on  for  dear  life,  and  out  of 
consideration  for  its  two  leaders,  Germany  did  not  declare  war  upon  Ru- 
mania in  January,  1916,  the  imminency  of  which  was  brought  on  by  the 
grain  deals  made  between  the  Rumanian  Central  Commission  and  the 
British  Purchasing  Bureau  in  Bucharest. 

The  Rumanian  Central  Commission  had  been  established  for  the  pur- 
pose of  regulating  exports  in  breadstuff,  legumes,  meats,  fats  and  the  like. 


216  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Food  was  by  now  very  scarce  in  the  countries  of  the  Central  Powers,  and 
every  effort  was  made  to  get  from  Rumania  all  that  could  be  had.  But 
that  was  not  in  harmony  with  the  starvation  program  of  the  Entente 
governments.  There  was  enough  food  in  Rumania  to  offset  to  quite  an 
extent  the  endeavor  of  the  British  blockade.  Feedstuff s  for  domestic 
animals  were  also  being  produced  en  masse,  German  agents  having  in- 
duced the  Rumanian  landowners  to  plant  as  many  of  them  as  possible. 
By  exporting  her  entire  surplus  farm  production  Rumania  would  have 
substantially  supported  the  Central  empires,  such  in  fact  was  the  inten- 
tion of  the  Marghiloman-Carp  combination,  which  was  very  influential  in 
the  rural  districts. 

That  camp,  moreover,  had  a  strong  argument  on  its  side.  Rumania 
had  in  the  past  imported  most  of  the  manufactured  commodities  it  needed, 
and  the  War  had  not  changed  that.  Against  this  import  the  country  had 
heretofore  exported  her  large  surplus  of  agricultural  produce.  The  War, 
also,  had  not  brought  any  change  in  this  field.  Rumania,  in  order  to 
import  had  to  export.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  offset  the  drain  on  her 
wealth,  which  importing  without  exporting  constituted,  by  financial  as- 
sistance from  the  Allied  governments.  Indeed,  that  was  attempted  quite 
early  in  the  War.  But  the  Germans  had  for  such  maneuvers  methods  of 
their  own.  As  in  the  case  of  Holland,  and  that  of  other  neutrals,  Germany 
insisted  that  for  everything  exported  kind  had  to  be  given  in  return.  In 
all  cases  food  was  demanded. 

The  Bratianu  government  cast  about  for  deliverance  from  the  con- 
dition set  by  the  Central  Powers,  but  found  none.  The  granaries  and 
larders  of  Russia  were  then  still  full  to  overflowing,  being  glutted  with 
the  surplus  of  the  1914  and  1915  harvests,  which  closing  of  the  Darda- 
nelles and  the  control  of  the  Baltic  by  the  German  fleet  had  left  in  the 
country.  Russia,  therefore,  was  not  importing  food,  and  while  the  port 
of  Archangelsk  had  been  used  to  some  extent  in  the  summer  of  1915  for 
the  exporting  of  food  to  France  and  Great  Britain,  the  Russian  railroads 
between  the  Rumanian  border  and  Archangelsk  were  so  overcrowded  with 
military  traffic  as  to  remove  Rumanian  grain  shipments  from  the  list 
of  probabilities.  Then,  too,  Rumania  had  found  it  next  to  impossible  to 
import  over  that  route.  Russia  is  not  a  country  in  which  manufacture 
is  carried  on  to  an  exporting  extent,  and  to  import  from  France  and 
Great  Britain  via  Norway  and  Sweden  was  very  expensive — via  the 
port  on  the  White  Sea  it  was  most  uncertain  since  Archangelsk  had  more 
than  it  could  do  taking  care  of  the  strictly  military  traffic. 

Rumania,  then,  faced  the  situation  of  having  her  crops  spoil  on  her 
hands — ^literally,  since  storage  facilities  were  virtually  non-existent — and 
then  do  without  needed  imports  besides.     The  governments  of  Central 


A  DIPLOMATIC  DEAL  IN  WHEAT  217 

Europe  became  more  and  more  exacting  as  the  problem  grew,  and  Rumania 
was  finally  obliged  to  sell  to  them  whatever  they  wanted — cereals  of  all 
kinds,  animal  products,  and  mineral  oils. 

It  seemed  for  a  time  that  in  this  manner  the  efforts  of  the  British 
blockade  would  go  by  the  board.  While  ultimately  that  blockade  was 
bound  to  be  effective,  its  result  upon  the  Central  empires  could,  by  means 
of  the  food  in  Rumania,  be  so  retarded  that  the  Germanic  camp  might 
achieve  a  victory  over  the  Allies  before  the  pinch  was  felt  too  much  and 
the  morale  of  the  army  and  civil  population  undermined. 

Rumania  had  on  hand  at  this  particular  period  about  one-half  of  the 
large  surplus  of  her  crops  in  1914,  and  the  entire  surplus  of  her  1915 
harvest.  For  instance,  there  was  then  in  the  country  about  340,000 
carloads  of  wheat,  ready  for  export.  Since  the  European  carload  is  ten 
tons,  that  meant,  if  all  of  this  wheat  was  taken  into  the  Central  States, 
that  every  man,  woman  and  child  would  have  had  about  57  pounds  of 
wheat,  making  roughly  95  one-pound  loaves  of  bread,  as  wheat  was  then 
milled,  in  addition  to  the  breadstuffs  produced  at  home.  Starvation  would 
have  been  out  of  the  question  then,  especially  since  the  Rumanian  wheat 
crop  of  1916,  some  220,000  carloads,  prospectively,  would  have  further 
reinforced  them.  Already  the  War  of  Attrition  was  in  its  first  phases, 
and  famine  was  now  more  than  ever  looked  upon  as  the  most  potent  of 
the  Allied  forces,  as  indeed  it  was,  for  without  starvation  the  Allied  and 
Associated  governments  would  have  never  defeated  Germany. 

The  Rumanian  premier  was  not  in  position  to  improve  this  situation 
in  favor  of  the  Allies,  so  long  as  the  governments  in  London,  Paris  and 
Petrograd  looked  upon  the  situation  as  one  solvent  by  the  usual  means 
of  export  and  import.  But  little  by  little  the  Allies  learned  in  that  respect. 
The  British  Purchasing  Bureau  was  established  in  Bucharest,  and  in  the 
last  days  of  December  it  made  an  agreement  with  the  Rumanian  ministry 
of  agriculture,  of  which  the  Central  Commission  was  but  a  sort  of  bureau, 
for  the  transfer  to  British  ownership  of  80,000  carloads  of  wheat.  A 
general  option  for  the  next  crop  was  also  engineered. 

News  of  the  deal  acted  like  the  dropping  of  a  bomb  in  the  Central 
Countries.  The  last  chance  of  warding  off  the  spectre  of  famine  seemed 
gone.  Baron  von  den  Bussche  Haddenhausen,  the  German  minister  at 
Bucharest,  had  a  few  days  before  been  called  to  Berlin.  While  he  was 
away  from  his  post  the  first  rumors  concerning  the  deal  were  heard  in  the 
Rumanian  capital.  Herr  von  Rheinbaben  immediately  communicated  with 
his  chief,  who,  after  having  been  given  plenary  powers  in  the  matter,  at 
a  conference  of  the  German  cabinet,  rushed  back  to  Bucharest,  arrived 
there  in  the  afternoon  and  an  hour  later  put  Premier  Bratianu  face  to 
face  with  a  declaration  of  war. 


218  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

It  seems  that  the  grain  deal  made  with  the  British  Purchasing  Bureau 
was  looked  upon  as  an  unfriendly  act  in  Berlin  and  Vienna.  The  facts 
in  the  case,  as  I  had  occasion  to  establish  them  in  behalf  of  the  news 
service  I  was  connected  with,  were  these :  The  800,000  tons  of  wheat  had 
been  bought  at  a  price  a  shade  better  than  what  the  Germans  were 
paying.  There  being  no  opportunity  of  exporting  the  grain  just  then, 
the  Rumanian  Central  Commission  had  undertaken  to  store  the  wheat  in 
granaries  not  yet  established.  Until  the  transfer  of  the  wheat  from  the 
bins  of  the  producers  to  the  magazines  all  risk  was  to  be  assumed  by  the 
seller. 

It  was  this  feature  of  the  contract  that  brought  out  that  the  Rumanians 
were  dissatisfied  with  the  deal.  While  the  price  paid  was  a  little  better, 
there  was  bound  to  be  a  loss  to  the  wheat  holders  if  the  grain  was  not 
promptly  taken  oflF  their  hands.  In  addition,  the  contract  was  a  little  too 
specific  and  exacting  to  please  men  who  had  sold  any  sort  of  wheat  to 
the  Central  Powers  Purchasing  Agency,  the  German  and  Austro-Hungarian 
commission  having  been  merged  some  time  before  this.  The  agency  bought 
almost  anything  that  resembled  food,  and  then  saw  to  it  that  the  losses 
sustained,  which  at  times  were  enormous,  were  made  good  at  home  by 
an  increase  in  the  price  of  the  articles  exported  to  Rumania,  the  scheme 
meaning  that  the  whole  of  the  Rumanian  population  was  being  taxed  by 
foreign  governments  in  the  interests  of  the  Rumanian  landowning  class. 
The  contract  of  the  British  called  for  first-class  ware,  and  even  its  terms 
of  payment  were  not  the  best  obtainable. 

It  was  frankly  announced  that  the  wheat  would  have  to  remain  in 
Rumania  until  the  termination  of  the  War.  Indeed,  there  was  no  alterna- 
tive for  that.  As  I  have  already  pointed  out,  the  Dardanelles  was  closed 
and  the  Russian  railroads  could  not  handle  the  trafiic. 

So  far,  indignation  in  Rumania  was  limited  to  classes  that  were 
rather  pro-German:  the  large  landowners  and  the  grain  dealers,  most  of 
the  latter  being  Jews.  But  when  the  terms  of  the  deal  were  later  pub- 
lished in  their  entirety  other  elements  began  to  denounce  the  Rumanian 
government.  The  trade  balance  between  Rumania  and  the  Central  Powers 
had  been  liquidated  in  the  past  on  a  basis  calling  for  payment  in  gold  to 
the  extent  of  one-third.  The  wheat  contract  with  the  British  had  a  similar 
provision,  but  went  a  little  further. 

The  National  Bank  of  Rumania  acted  as  the  fiscal  agent  of  the  sellers 
and  purchasers  of  wheat  and  issued  notes  of  its  own  for  the  purpose  of 
paying  for  the  wheat,  leaving  the  gold  in  the  vaults  of  the  Bank  of  London, 
which  had  established  a  credit  for  the  National  Bank  of  Rumania  to  the 
full  extent  of  the  sale,  about  eight  million  pounds  sterling.  Since  the 
gold  was  not  actually  placed  in  the  possession  of  the  National  Bank  of 


A  DIPLOMATIC  DEAL  IN  WHEAT  219 

Rumania,  and  since  the  issuance  of  paper  currency  to  the  full  amount  of 
the  purchase  price  was  not  guaranteed  by  anything  actually  within  Ru- 
mania, it  was  charged  that  the  deal  amounted  to  no  less  than  an  inflation 
of  the  Rumanian  currency  for  the  benefit  of  a  foreign  government.  In 
the  end  the  case  might  be  one  in  which  the  wheat  had  spoiled  on  the  hands 
of  those  who  were  being  compelled  by  the  Rumanian  government  to  sell 
to  the  Rumanian  Central  Commission,  and  then,  according  to  the  terms  of 
the  contract  between  the  commission  and  the  seller,  the  National  Bank 
of  Rumania  would  have  the  paper  currency  afloat,  but  no  gold  as  yet,  and 
the  holders  of  the  wheat  might  have  neither  wheat  nor  money.  To  such 
a  wild-catting  financial  transaction  even  the  Ententophiles  objected.  But 
the  deal  had  been  closed  before  they  could  be  heard  and  now  it  was  too  late. 

Political  Business  in  Plain  Language 

That  the  Rumanian  Central  Commission  might  engage  in  some  such 
enterprise  must  have  been  feared  by  the  German  minister.  At  any  rate 
he  had,  before  his  departure  from  Bucharest,  for  Berlin,  obtained  from 
King  Ferdinand  the  promise  that  nothing  would  be  done  before  giving 
the  Central  Powers  agency  a  chance  to  compete  with  offers  made  by  the 
British  Purchasing  Bureau.  After  Baron  von  den  Bussche-Haddenhausen 
had  interviewed  Premier  Bratianu,  upon  his  hasty  return  from  Berlin,  he 
immediately  applied  for  an  audience  with  the  King  of  Rumania,  and 
obtained  it  the  same  evening.  The  scene  which  took  place  was  not  a  very 
polite  one.  The  German  minister  went  so  far  as  to  call  Ferdinand  a  man 
who  could  not  be  trusted,  using  expressions  of  the  bitterest  satire. 

It  was  plain  that  the  German  minister  wanted  to  provocate  the  Ru- 
manian government  into  an  act  that  would  have  led  to  war.  The  military 
position  of  the  Central  States  was  a  good  one  just  then.  The  Allied  forces 
had  been  withdrawn  from  Gallipoli,  and  the  expedition  of  Sarrail,  at 
Salonika,  was  somewhat  of  a  jest  as  yet.  In  the  battle  of  Kustorino  and 
the  Golash  Mountain,  of  which  the  world  never  heard  anything,  because 
my  dispatches  dealing  with  the  affair  never  got  further  than  the  British 
censors,  the  Allied  forces  under  General  Sarrail  had  been  manhandled  by 
the  Bulgarians  under  General  Todoroff,  in  a  manner  that  left  them  sick  at 
heart,  and  the  prospects  at  Salonika  were  just  then  the  poorest.  The 
Russian  army  had  not  yet  recovered  from  its  retreat  in  the  course  of  the 
summer  and  fall  of  1915.  In  the  West  the  war  of  the  trenches  left  the 
French  and  British  none  too  hopeful,  and  the  Italians  seemed  unable  to 
get  beyond  the  Tolmein  bridgehead  and  the  western  fringe  of  the  Carso. 
In  Mesopotamia  the  British  were  being  driven  back  by  the  Turks,  and 
the  Russians  had  a  hard  time  of  it  in  the  Caucasus.    The  Central  Powers 


220  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

governments  thought  it  wise,  therefore,  to  bring  the  issue  of  Rumania  to 
liquidation. 

King  Ferdinand  pocketed  the  insults  which  the  German  minister  had 
hurled  at  him,  and  Premier  Bratianu  did  the  same.  Under  the  circum- 
stances that  was  the  best.  Generals  Iliescu  and  Averescu,  the  leaders  of 
the  Rumanian  army,  were  not  men  whom  even  M.  Bratianu,  their  patron, 
could  trust  very  far  in  questions  of  efficiency,  and  so  it  came  that  the 
Rumanian  Central  Commission  made  up  its  mind  to  sell  to  the  agency  of 
the  Central  Powers  as  much  as  possible — most  of  the  remaining  wheat, 
great  quantities  of  maize,  beans,  barley  and  oats,  pork,  butter,  fats  and 
mineral  oils. 

Had  it  not  been  for  the  efforts  of  Senator  Marghiloman  and  Peter 
Carp  even  that  would  not  have  saved  Rumania.  The  Central  Powers 
governments  feared  that  in  the  end  Bratianu  would,  as  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  wheat  deal  indicated  already,  join  the  Entente  camp  anyway. 

Mr.  Marghiloman  began  to  use  gentle  words  with  the  German  min- 
ister, and  Mr.  Carp  did  his  best  with  Count  Czernin,  the  Austro-Hun- 
garian  envoy.  The  two  of  them  argued  that  it  would  be  better  to  continue 
Rumania  as  a  food-producing  neutral  than  to  plunge  her  into  the  War, 
which  might  lead  to  nothing  more  than  the  disorganization  of  the  one 
country  which  could  meet  to  some  extent  the  effects  of  the  British 
blockade.    That  much  I  learned  from  Senator  Marghiloman. 

What  other  promises  he  made  I  have  no  means  of  knowing.  I  should 
mention,  en  passant,  that  after  this  incident  M.  Marghiloman  thought  little 
enough  of  the  Germans  and  Austro-Hungarians.  I  lunched  with  him 
quite  often  and  during  the  long  promenades  made  in  the  solarium  he 
showed  me  that  he  was  a  thoroughly  disillusioned  man.  It  could  not  be 
otherwise,  since  his  country  was  beset  on  all  sides  by  nations  that  were 
friendly  only  so  long  as  Rumania  could  please  them.  Russia  might  assume 
a  threatening  attitude  at  the  very  moment  when  M.  Blondel  and  Sir  H. 
Barclay  were  using  the  softest  words  in  persuasion.  The  temper  of  the 
diplomatists  of  the  Central  Powers  was  enough  to  prove  that  the  ultima 
ratio  was  desired  in  Berlin  and  Vienna,  and  in  the  Bulgarian  press  writers 
were  very  outspoken  in  regard  to  the  Dobrudja  and  the  Treaty  of 
Bucharest. 

Accepting  that  the  true  patriot  looks  in  such  a  crisis  at  the  future  of 
his  own  country  and  people,  even  if  he  had  exploited  this  people  as  much 
as  Senator  Marghiloman  had  done,  instead  of  considering  the  welfare  of 
other  aggregates,  I  must  say  that  the  senator  deserves  to  be  classed  as 
one  of  the  best  of  them.  He  was  no  demagogue  of  the  Sylla  type,  but  a 
man  who  believed  in  government  by  the  fit,  without  drawing  fine  distinctions 
in  this  fitness. 


POLITICAL  BUSINESS  IN  PLAIN  LANGUAGE         221 

After  a  while  the  wrath  of  BerHn  and  Vienna  subsided,  and  since  the 
possibility  of  a  war  had  been  set  back  a  little,  for  the  time  being,  I  decided 
to  return  to  Vienna.  I  mention  this  on  account  of  an  incident  en  route, 
recording  of  which  seems  rather  relevant. 

Before  I  left  Bucharest  I  was  told  that  I  could  not  get  further  than 
Predeal  by  train,  since  right  beyond  the  border  a  bad  wreck  had  blocked 
the  line,  with  no  prospect  of  its  being  cleared  away  in  a  hurry.  There 
had  been  heavy  snows,  and  when  these  fall  the  Transylvanian  Carpathians 
are  not  the  easiest  mountains  to  cross.  From  Predeal  to  Kronstadt  I 
would  have  to  travel  by  sleigh.  I  was  advised  not  to  risk  that,  travel  on 
the  pass  being  anything  but  safe  when  there  was  a  possibility  of  lavines 
coming  down  the  high  mountain  sides. 

I  decided  to  sleigh  it,  because  I  wanted  to  get  a  look  at  the  military 
preparations  that  were  being  made  in  the  pass  by  the  Austrians,  on  their 
side,  and  the  Rumanians,  on  theirs.  That  there  was  something  going 
on  I  had  learned  in  this  manner.  On  my  trip  southward  three  weeks 
before  the  conductor  had  ordered  all  passengers  into  the  dining  car.  When 
this  command  had  been  complied  with  the  trainbands  and  waiters  pulled 
down  every  window  shade  and  then  saw  to  it  that  none  was  raised  while 
the  train  sped  through  the  border  zone.  That  was  a  very  fine  way  of 
announcing  that  something  was  going  on.  I  surmised  what  it  might  be  and 
was  glad  of  the  chance  of  sleighing  through  at  least  a  part  of  the  zones 
on  both  sides  of  the  boundary. 

Some  Matters  Incident  to  Warfare 

I  saw  little  enough  until  I  reached  the  scene  of  the  wreck,  and  then 
I  learned  how  the  Central  Powers  were  getting  rubber.  It  had  been  hoped 
by  their  enemies  that  a  shortage  in  rubber  would  soon  hamper  the  Germans 
and  their  allies,  but  that  moment  never  came,  as  I  ascertained  from  riding 
about  the  fronts  in  cars  having  very  good  tires. 

The  wrecked  train  consisted  of  about  thirty  freight  cars,  most  of 
which  had  been  derailed  by  brake-failure,  on  a  steep  grade,  with  the  result 
that  now  they  lay  at  the  base  of  a  high  embankment  a  little  south  of 
Temes. 

About  one-half  of  the  train  had  been  piled  up.  Its  freight  of  wheat 
and  mineral  oil  was  now  a  scramble.  Russian  prisoners  of  war  were 
trying  to  save  whatever  they  could,  and  I  noticed  that  German  officers 
and  soldiers  commanded  them.  The  wheat  was  soaked  with  the  contents 
of  the  oil  tank-cars  on  top  of  the  pile,  and  seemed  to  get  little  attention. 
Some  large,  black  disks,  two  inches  in  thickness,  and  about  two  feet  in 
diameter,  seemed  to  deserve  the  greatest  care.    I  wondered  what  the  stuff 


222  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

was,  and  then  noticed  that  the  open  belly  of  a  freightcar  was  filled  with  a 
mixed  cargo  of  wheat  and  these  disks.  I  smelled  a  rat,  left  the  sleigh 
and  examined  one  of  the  black  wheels,  to  find  on  one  side  of  each  of  them 
lettering  in  Russian  and  Latin,  showing  that  the  rubber,  for  such  it  was, 
came  from  the  PutiloflF  Works  in  Russia.  Evidently,  there  was  some 
room  for  "civil"  traffic  on  either  the  Russian  railroads  or  in  some  Russian 
port.  Rumanians  no  doubt  had  imported  this  rubber  from  Russia  and 
then  sold  it  to  the  Central  Powers.  I  am  no  expert  in  such  matters,  but 
concluded  that  the  shipment  wrecked,  but  now  about  to  be  salvaged,  would 
keep  hundreds  of  automobiles  going  for  many  months.  No  doubt,  there 
had  been  other  shipments  and  there  would  be  more. 

Entering  Temes  and  Kronstadt,  further  on,  I  found  that  German 
troops  of  some  sort  were  near  the  Rumanian  border.  Inquiry  elicited 
the  information  that  these  troops  were  concerned  with  the  heavy  imports 
of  wheat  and  such  made  from  Rumania.  That  may  have  been  so.  At 
least  I  have  no  right  to  say  that  it  was  not  so,  seeing  that  I  know  no 
better.  For  all  that  I  was  not  able  to  dissociate  entirely  the  language  of 
Baron  von  den  Bussche-Haddenhausen  and  the  conciliancy  of  the  Rumanian 
government  from  the  many  billetting  notices  I  saw  on  the  housedoors,  and 
the  sign  above  a  schoolhouse  in  Temes  which  said  that  here  were  the 
headquarters  of  a  certain  German  cavalry  organization. 

I  must  state,  however,  that  German  cavalry  did  occupy  itself  a  great 
deal  with  transportation  by  motor  truck.  A  few  days  later  I  had  an 
interview  with  Count  Tisza,  the  Hungarian  minister-president.  From 
his  remarks  I  gathered  that  the  crisis  between  the  Central  governments  and 
Rumania  had  been  most  acute,  but  that  now  it  was  in  subsidency,  as  he 
expressed  it. 

I  will  take  the  liberty  to  point  out  here  that  during  the  entire  duration 
of  the  Great  War  I  never  allowed  myself  to  be  influenced  by  the  appear- 
ance of  things  or  the  asseverations  of  governments  and  diplomatists.  I 
had  watched  the  coming  of  the  crisis  in  South  Africa,  in  1896  and  again  in 
1899,  had  borne  arms  in  the  defense  of  the  Boer  republics,  and  had  since 
then  occupied  myself  very  much  with  political  situations  and  war,  doing 
service  as  newspaperman  in  Mexico  and  along  the  border  before  and  during 
the  revolutions.  War  had  thus  become  to  me  what  it  actually  is,  a 
strictly  biological  incident  in  the  life  of  nations.  The  pretexts  of  govern- 
ment meant  absolutely  nothing  to  me;  toward  statements  made  by  poli- 
ticians in  office  and  diplomatists  on  and  off  post  I  reserved  the  skeptical 
attitude  with  which  we  newspaper  men  are  now  blessed,  then  cursed. 

An  estimate,  along  these  lines,  of  Rumania's  chances  of  staying  out 
of  the  European  War  led  to  a  conclusion  that  these  chances  were  nil, 
despite  the  fact  that  Count  Czernin,  the  Austro-Hungarian  minister  at 


SOME  MATTERS  INCIDENT  TO  WARFARE  223 

Bucharest,  succeeded  now  to  leadership  in  the  management  of  Central 
Power  interests  in  Rumania. 

The  excitement  having  blown  over  already  by  the  beginning  of  March, 
1916 — ^the  same  year — Rumania  again  was  looked  upon  in  the  old  light. 
It  would  be  best  to  keep  her  producing  food,  even  if  some  of  it  was 
sold  to  the  British  Purchasing  Bureau.  At  least  one-half  of  the  surplus 
of  harvests  could  be  demanded,  and  half  a  loaf  was  now  more  than  ever 
better  than  none  in  Germany,  Austria-Hungary  and  even  Turkey,  to  which 
country  Rumanian  wheat  flour  was  also  exported.  It  had  been  shown 
by  that  time  that  occupying  hostile  territory  made  great  demands  on  the 
man  power  of  the  Central  governments.  In  Russia,  Poland,  Serbia,  and  in 
Belgium  and  France,  not  to  mention  Turkey  and  Bulgaria,  and  the  long 
lines  of  communication  to  the  several  fronts,  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
men  were  needed  for  administrative  purposes,  and  while  few  of  these 
were  longer  fit  for  service  in  the  trenches,  the  man  power  of  the  Cen- 
tral Powers  group  of  belligerents  was  seriously  lessened  thereby  never- 
theless. 

Bratianu  Makes  a  Diplomatic  Deal 

Already  it  was  plain  that  in  the  end  Germany  and  her  allies  might 
conquer  themselves  to  death,  a  feature  of  the  "war  map'*  which  at  first  was 
not  given  enough  attention.  But  among  the  several  truths  which  were 
then  breaking  into  the  minds  in  Berlin  and  Vienna  was  also  this  one. 
Rumania  was  left  in  peace  and  the  several  commercial  understandings 
reached  with  her  were  all  more  or  less  reasonable,  some  of  them  highly 
advantageous  to  her  in  fact.  It  came  to  be  the  slogan  in  Central  Europe 
that  Rumania  was  the  best  ally  as  a  neutral,  in  which  it  was  not  forgotten 
that  her  entry  in  the  War  on  either  side  would  lead  to  an  extension  of 
the  Russian  front  that  might  bring  greater  disadvantages  than  it  could 
bring  advantages,  even  if  her  participation  was  in  favor  of  the  Central 
Powers. 

Senator  Marghiloman  had  used  that  very  often  as  an  argument  in 
reply  to  those  who  wanted  action  on  the  part  of  his  country,  but  he  did 
not  always  convince  the  enthusiasts  on  both  sides  who  thought  that  Rumania 
could  decide  the  War — quite  the  most  amusing  hypothesis  that  was  ever 
set  up.  The  value  of  the  Rumanian  army  to  either  of  the  camps  was  a  very 
low  one.  There  were  indeed  good  troops,  but  the  greater  part  of  the 
establishment  was  very  poor  in  quality,  and  the  War  had  shown  that  an 
army  not  uniform  in  morale  was  a  dangerous  thing  to  handle  on  a  long 
front.  The  adage  that  no  chain  is  stronger  than  its  weakest  link  was 
being  proven  by  the  Austro-Hungarian  troops  every  day. 


224  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

It  was  a  case  of  sentiment  which  later  on  drove  Rumania  into  the 
War  on  the  side  of  the  Allies.  There  was  to  be  a  Rumania  mare — Greater 
Rumania. 

In  April  Premier  Bratianu  had  finally  made  up  his  mind  to  a  thing 
he  should  have  attempted  while  the  Russian  army  was  still  good  and  was 
pressing  the  Germans  and  Austro-Hungarian  armies  hard  in  the  Carpa- 
thians. The  war  spirit  was  at  low  ebb  in  the  dual  monarchy  at  that  time, 
late  fall  and  winter  of  1914,  and  Rumania's  entry  into  the  War  would 
have  produced  a  political  effect  which  it  could  not  produce  after  the  popu- 
lation of  the  Danube  countries  had  become  used  to  losses  and  reverses,  to 
war  with  Italy,  and  to  deprivation.  Gradually  applied,  distress  and 
privation  will  harden  any  people  finding  itself  in  a  desperate  position, 
and  so  it  came  that,  in  Austria  and  Hungary,  Rimiania's  decision  caused 
only  a  temporary  stir,  though  the  oppositionists  in  the  Hungarian  parlia- 
ment, wishing  to  hit  at  Count  Tisza,  made  much  ado  over  the  initial 
successes  of  the  Rumanian  army  and  the  occupation  of  much  of  Transyl- 
vania in  August  and  September  of  1916. 

I  was  at  that  time  temporarily  attached  to  the  Ninth  German  army, 
commanded  by  General  Falkenhayn,  the  former  chief  of  staff  of  the 
German  army,  and  thus  was  able,  as  I  had  already  done  in  the  case  of 
Turkey  and  Bulgaria,  to  see  diplomacy  translated  to  the  battlefield.  I 
saw  the  wrecked  camps  and  wagon  trains  of  the  routed  Second  Army 
of  the  Rumanians,  in  the  Voros  Torony  Pass,  the  futile  attempts  to  hold 
the  passes  further  east,  the  childish  attempts  at  fortification  by  Rumanian 
military  engineers,  in  the  Torzburger  Pass,  and  the  crushing  of  Rumanian 
resistance  in  the  Predeal  Pass,  the  one  through  which  I  had  sleighed  a 
few  months  before. 

Before  the  onslaught  of  that  truly  terrible  German  war  machine  the 
Rumanian  regiments  were  the  veriest  chaff,  as  I  saw  on  the  afternoon  on 
which  Predeal  was  taken.  I  thought  of  Senator  Marghiloman  as  I  sat 
in  the  fork  of  a  stout  oak,  fifteen  hundred  yards  away  from  the  Rumanian 
trenches,  for  the  attack  of  which  the  German  and  Hungarian  infantry  was 
deploying  a  few  hundred  feet  away. 

The  treaty  which  bound  Rumania  to  enter  the  War  was  finally  signed 
on  August  16th.  Rumania  was  to  get  all  of  Transylvania,  the  Banat  and 
Bukowina — the  same  Banat,  by  the  way,  which  had  already  been  promised 
to  another  ally,  Serbia.  But  at  that  moment  the  Serb  army  was  hardly 
in  being  and  the  Allied  governments  had  to  practice  "Realpolitik"  in  the 
chancelleries,  while  the  ideal  in  international  relations,  and  the  weal  of 
small  nations  was  attended  to  by  the  newspapers.  To  make  ideal  and 
practice  a  little  more  agreeable  to  one  another,  Rumania  was  bound  to 
"indemnify  the  Serbians  of  the  Banat,  who,  in  abandoning  their  proper- 


BRATIANU  MAKES  A  DIPLOMATIC  DEAL  225 

ties,  wish  to  emigrate  within  two  years  from  the  conclusion  of  peace." 
This,  indeed,  was  a  new  twist  in  self-determination,  but  presently  there 
were  to  be  more  of  these.  It  makes  no  difference  to  a  diplomatist  what 
he  promises  or  has  promised.    He  will  always  lie  his  way  out. 

In  the  realization  of  the  desire  for  a  ''Rumania  mare" — which  two 
words  I  found  written  on  nearly  every  public  building  in  Transylvania  and 
over  every  gate-keeper's  cabin  on  the  railroads  in  the  district — the  Rumanian 
army  was  to  get  the  following  support :  General  Brousiloff  was  to  continue 
with  increased  vigor  his  attacks  on  the  Centralists  in  the  Carpathians,  and 
Russia  was  to  send  into  Rumania,  and  against  the  Bulgars,  via  the  Dobrudja, 
two  divisions  of  infantry  and  one  of  cavalry,  while  General  Sarrail  was  to 
start  an  offensive  from  Salonika.  These  reinforcements  of  the  Rumanian 
army  could  not  be  called  excessive,  nor  even  generous,  considering  what  that 
army  really  was. 

On  August  27th  the  Rumanian  government  declared  war  upon  Austria- 
Hungary,  and,  the  passes  of  the  mountains  of  southern  Transylvania  being 
poorly  defended,  owing  to  the  lack  of  man  power  and  bad  management 
on  the  part  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  general  staff,  then  still  in  the  hands 
of  the  congenial  but  rather  inefficient  Hoetzendorff,  much  Hungarian  terri- 
tory was  soon  in  the  hands  of  the  Rumanian  army.  On  August  29th 
Bulgaria  announced  that  a  state  of  war  existed  between  it  and  Rumania,  a 
course  that  was  taken  also  on  the  same  day  by  the  Ottoman  government, 
which,  in  anticipation  of  this,  had  eight  days  before  declared  war  upon 
Italy,  to  which  the  government  in  Rome  replied  with  a  declaration  of  war 
to  Germany  on  August  28th.  This  cycle  of  war  declarations  was  later 
closed  by  Germany  declaring  war  upon  Rumania  on  September  14th, 
when  her  Ninth  Army  was  already  in  Hungary  and  ready  to  throw  the 
Rumanian  forces  out  of  Transylvania,  which  was  easily  accomplished  with 
a  minimum  of  losses  to  the  forces  under  General  Falkenhayn.  Mean- 
while, Bulgarian,  German  and  Turkish  forces,  under  Mackensen,  were 
driving  the  Rumanian  army  and  the  Russian  contingents  before  them  in 
the  Dobrudja  and  across  the  Danube,  northward.  A  few  weeks  later 
Bucharest  had  been  taken  and  the  Russo-Centralist  front  extended  from 
the  Baltic  to  the  Black  Sea. 

Rumania  had  no  great  friends  among  the  Allies.  Russia  was  any- 
thing but  trusted,  and  the  population  did  not  have  its  heart  in  the  business 
on  hand.  In  a  very  interesting  report  made  by  General  Palivanoff,  on 
November  20,  1916,  we  find  the  following : 

"From  the  standpoint  of  Russian  interests,  we  must  be  guided 
by  the  following  considerations  in  judging  the  present  situation 
in  Rumania.  If  things  had  developed  in  such  a  way  that  the  mili- 
tary and  political  agreement  of  1916  with  Rumania  had  been  fully 


226  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

realized,  then  a  very  strong  state  would  have  arisen  in  the  Balkans, 
consisting  of  Moldavia,  Wallachia,  the  Dobrudja  (i.  e.,  the  present 
Rumania),  and  Transylvania,  the  Banat  and  Bukovina,  with  a 
population  of  about  13,000,000.  In  the  future  this  state  could 
hardly  have  been  friendly  disposed  towards  Russia,  and  would 
scarcely  have  abandoned  the  design  of  realizing  its  national 
dreams  in  Bessarabia  and  the  Balkans.  Consequently,  the  col- 
lapse of  Rumania's  plans  as  a  Great  Power  is  not  particularly 
opposed  to  Russia's  interest.  This  circumstance  must  be  exploited 
by  us  in  order  to  strengthen  for  as  long  as  possible  those  com- 
pulsory ties  which  link  Russia  to  Rumania.  Our  successes  on 
the  Rumanian  front  are  for  us  of  extraordinary  importance,  as  the 
only  possibility  of  deciding  once  for  all  in  the  sense  we  desire 
the  question  of  Constantinople  and  the  Straits." 

After  all  Senator  Marghiloman  was  right  and  Bratianu  wrong. 

For  the  author  of  the  above  it  may  be  said  that  he  was  as  good  a 
diplomatist  of  the  modern  type  as  he  was  a  soldier.  If  you  cannot  gain 
by  the  successes  of  your  allies,  profit  by  their  failure. 


XII 

DIPLOMACY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION 

RUMANIA'S  somewhat  spectacular  appearance  in  the  arena  of  the 
European  War  marked  the  end  of  the  'Expansion  Phase  of  that 
conflict.  It  was  Hkewise  the  inauguration  of  the  Attrition  Phase. 
The  Russian  successes  on  the  Rumanian  front  of  which  General  Palivanoflf 
spoke  were  not  so  much  feats  of  arms  as  tactical  advantages  over  the 
waning  man  power  of  the  Centralist  camp.  Though  the  mass  attacks  of 
General  Brousiloff,  commander  of  the  Russian  South  Army,  had  been 
virtually  stifled  by  now  in  the  blood  of  the  Russians  themselves,  the 
German  general  staflf  saw  the  Eastern  Front  extended  far  beyond  its  means. 
That  front  could  be  held,  to  be  sure,  and  was  held,  but  it  was  taxing  the 
military  means  of  the  Central  Powers  and  their  allies  by  its  very  length. 
The  German  army,  in  the  face  of  its  successes  in  Rumania,  which  were  the 
cheapest  it  had  so  far  bought,  was  very  much  in  the  position  of  the  pugilist 
whose  arms  are  shorter  than  those  of  the  antagonist.  The  Eastern  Front 
was  a  thing  without  end,  and  the  Central  Power  troops  found  that  holding 
it  was  not  dissimilar  to  beating  the  air  with  one's  fists.  Nothing  came  to 
the  occupation  of  almost  as  much  territory  as  Germany  itself,  and  nothing 
could  come  of  it.  In  a  way  the  experience  of  Napoleon  was  being  repeated, 
though  this  time  the  catastrophe  came  leisurely,  because  the  modern  means 
of  transportation,  which  the  Corsican  did  not  have  in  1812,  held  back  for  a 
longer  time  the  inevitable. 

The  number  of  men  in  Berlin  and  Vienna  who  saw  this  was  not 
small.  I  happen  to  know  that  Emperor  Charles  of  Austria,  and  Count 
Czernin,  his  really  able  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  were  among  the  first 
to  stand  in  fear  of  the  space  that  had  been  gained  in  the  East.  The 
German  chancellor,  Bethmann-Hollweg,  also,  was  no  longer  convinced  of 
the  virtues  of  the  "War  Map."  It  was  evident  that  all  this  sparring  about 
in  the  air,  was  not  bringing  the  end  of  the  War  nearer — and  the  end  of 
the  War,  more  than  occupation  and  the  like,  seemed  now  the  thing  most 
to  be  desired.  Of  land  there  was  a  surfeit  now,  but  of  the  food  that  could 
be  produced  on  it,  a  great  scarcity.  To  raise  food  requires  labor  and  much 
of  it,  and  that  labor  could  not  be  had,  so  long  as  the  men  were  in  the 
trenches  or  in  the  ammunition  works,  and  the  women  most  of  their  time 
in  the  food  lines. 

227 


228  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Thus  it  came  about  that  Emperor  William  II  made  overtures  for 
peacOk.  These  overtures,  as  the  world  will  have  reason  to  remember  for 
many  a  day,  were  turned  down,  because  the  Allied  governments,  rather 
than  their  peoples,  chose  to  look  upon  them  as  beneath  their  serious  notice. 
It  was  said  that  the  offer  of  the  German  government  was  insincere  and 
too  indefinite.  On  the  face  of  things  it  was  that.  The  announcement 
confined  itself  to  saying  that  Germany  and  her  allies  were  now  in  a  mood 
to  be  spoken  to  by  the  half-defeated  enemies,  and  as  a  perfectly  useless 
jeu  de  grimace  the  "War-Map"  was  invoked  again — for  the  last  time, 
so  far  as  "foreign"  relations  of  the  Central  Powers  went. 

But  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  a  more  tactful  offer  of  peace 
would  have  fared  better,  under  the  circumstances.  Men  in  the  French 
government,  especially,  felt  that  the  Central  Power  troops  were  beating 
about  wildly  in  the  space  they  had  conquered,  and  seeing  now  for  the 
first  time  a  silver  lining  on  the  dark  clouds  that  had  hovered  over  France 
for  two  long  years  they  made  up  their  mind  to  see  the  thing  along  a 
little  more.  In  France  the  stage  had  been  reached  where  improvement  only 
was  possible.  It  could  not  be  worse,  even  if  now  and  then  a  regiment 
had  to  be  disbanded  and  its  men  distributed  to  organizations  with  better 
morale.  In  Great  Britain  the  childish  bombardments  by  Zeppelins  and 
aeroplane  had  roused  public  frenzy  to  the  fusing  point,  and  in  Russia, 
though  Sazonoff  was  now  no  more,  too  much  had  to  be  gained  by  the 
continuation  of  the  War — everything  to  be  lost  by  its  cessation.  The  offer 
of  the  German  emperor  was  spurned  therefore — with  a  hollow  laugh  at 
that.  Men  in  London,  Paris  and  Petrograd  knew  perfectly  well  that  the 
United  States  would  be  heard  from  before  the  end  came. 

The  Fruit  of  Diplomacy  Begins  to  Ripen 

There  were  a  good  many  forms  to  the  pitfalls  of  the  War  Map.  One 
of  them  was  that  the  general  public  of  Central  Europe  cared  no  longer 
whether  or  no  there  was  such  a  thing.  It  wanted  food,  not  territory.  Food 
being  on  the  wane,  prices  high,  taxation  already  unbearable,  and  nothing 
but  more  war  in  sight,  the  public  had  come  to  look  at  the  War  Map  as 
a  mockery,  which,  indeed,  it  was.  The  great  enthusiasm  of  the  early  war 
days  was  now  a  thing  of  the  past.  War  was  becoming  a  matter  of  routine — 
a  never-ending  succession  of  more  levies  in  men  and  money,  and  more 
dead  and  crippled,  with  an  ever-increasing  mortality  rate,  due  to  malnutri- 
tion; an  ever-gaining  laxity  in  morals,  and  unceasing  misery  as  a  doleful 
accompaniment.  To  be  sure  the  efficiency  of  the  German  army  had  only 
then  reached  its  highest  point,  but  that  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  army 
was  already  sadly  on  the  decline,  and  Bulgaria  and  Turkey  were  sick  of 


THE  FRUIT  OF  DIPLOMACY  BEGINS  TO  RIPEN      229 

the  War,  even  if  iMacedonia,  for  the  one,  and  Gallipoli  and  the  very 
national  capital,  for  the  other,  were  now  securely  held,  so  far  as  appearances 
went. 

Great  things  were  ahead.  The  British  government  was  now  about 
to  throw  real  armies  irto  France,  and  that  country  herself  was  scouring 
her  bans.  Though  Brousiloff  had  driven  Russians  into  death  by  the  tens 
of  thousands,  the  vast  reservoir  upon  which  he  drew  seemed  as  inexhausti- 
ble as  ever.  On  the  Carso  the  Italians  were  making  some  gains  now,  and 
more  men  were  being  drafted  into  the  armies.  There  was  on  in  every 
enemy  country  a  race  for  still  greater  armament  than  had  yet  been  made. 
Eighty  per  cent  of  the  White  Race  was  arming,  and  of  that  another  eighty 
per  cent  was  arming  against  the  Central  Powers,  with  the  United  States 
turning  more  and  more  into  a  huge  military  base  and  universal  arsenal 
for  the  forces  of  the  Allies.  Throughout  Central  Europe  these  things 
were  seen  and  discussed  in  camera.  Government  and  population,  in  the 
process  of  being  pressed  more  and  more  into  a  compact  mass  by  the 
pressure  from  without,  looked  at  one  another  and  then  turned  away. 
Times  were  hard,  indeed  ! 

But  even  that  was  not  all.  Germany  had  not  a  single  friend  anywhere, 
it  seemed.  "Belgium"  and  "Lusitania,"  which  to  many  had  remained 
empty  nouns,  began  to  have  a  great  meaning.  The  weight  of  world  public 
opinion  was  a  crushing  thing.  It  had  been  quite  a  favorite  slogan  of 
some  classes  in  Germany:  "We  can  do  without  friends,  so  long  as  they 
must  respect  us."  Now  it  was  seen  that  it  was  hard  to  get  along  without 
friends.  None  was  in  sight.  There  was  partial  support  of  the  cause  of 
the  Central  Powers  in  Sweden  and  Switzerland,  and  even  in  Holland  it  was 
still  possible  to  find  now  and  then  a  person  not  entirely  Germanophobe. 
Denmark  and  Norway  were  on  the  list  of  unfriendly  neutrals,  and  far- 
away Spain  was  clearly  divided  in  its  sympathies.  Farsighted  men,  among 
them  Count  Tisza,  had  already  realized  that  the  Central  Powers  could  not 
emerge  victors  from  the  War  without  coming  to  a  reckoning  with  the 
United  States  also.  On  February  26th,  1916,  already,  the  Hungarian 
minister-president  had  expressed  himself  to  me  in  that  sense.  At  the 
conclusion  of  a  two-hours  interview,  Count  Tisza,  in  reply  to  my  question 
as  to  how  much  of  his  statements  I  could  use,  placed  a  pad  of  paper  in 
my  han5.  Then  he  left  his  chair  and  walked  several  times  up  and  down 
the  spacious  room  that  was  his  office. 

"Please,  say  this  for  me,"  he  said,  as  he  stopped  before  me: 

"For  the  United  States  to  engage  in  the  European  War  would  be  a 
crime  against  humanity." 

When  I  had  written  this  down.  Count  Tisza  took  the  pad  out  of  my 
hand. 


230  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

"Yes!  That  is  all  I  can  say,"  he  remarked.  "It  may  be  too  much 
at  that.  At  any  rate  that  is  my  conviction.  Before  this  thing  is  over 
President  Wilson  will  have  created  the  needed  situation.  But  don't  say 
that.  You  would  not  get  it  past  our  censors.  You  would  not  even  get 
this  much  past  our  censors,  for  that  matter.  I  will  inform  Latinovitch  (his 
private  secretary)  to  do  what  is  necessary  to  get  this  through." 

That  was  more  than  a  year  before  relations  between  the  United  States 
and  Austria-Hungary  were  severed  by  the  latter. 

Of  the  assininity  displayed  by  the  German  government  in  regard  to 
Belgium  I  have  already  spoken.  Though  other  small  nations  had  mean- 
while fared  as  badly  almost  at  the  hands  of  the  Entente  governments, 
Belgium  was  a  ghost  that  would  not  down.  Presently  it  was  to  be  joined 
and  reinforced  by  the  Lusitania  affair. 

It  is  hard  to  understand  what  the  mentality  of  Great-Admiral  von 
Tirpitz  and  his  staff  was  when  it  was  decided  to  attack  the  Lusitania  with 
the  means  of  the  submarine,  the  torpedo.  To  be  sure  the  attitude  of 
President  Wilson  was  as  yet  but  poorly  defined,  and  in  'Germany  wholly 
misunderstood.  What  his  views  were  on  the  question  of  submarine  warfare 
versus  cruiser  warfare,  on  enemy  and  neutral  merchant  ships,  was  as  yet 
scarcely  known.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  the  later  exchange  of  notes 
which  seems  to  have  crystalized  in  Mr.  Wilson  himself  what  his  attitude 
was  to  be. 

Allied  Diplomacy  Is  Editor-in-Chief 

Since  this  matter  will  be  more  fully  discussed  further  on,  I  will  dismiss 
the  subject  here  with  the  statement  that  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  was 
in  many  respects  an  act  more  foolish  than  the  violation  of  the  neutrality  of 
Belgium.  Granting  that,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Germans,  the 
Lusitania  should  have  been  sunk,  the  act  was,  nevertheless,  that  of  a 
mad-cap  militarist,  incapable  of  recognizing  the  political  features  and  con- 
sequences of  his  conduct.  No  matter  what  the  facts  in  the  case,  the 
political  discredit  that  was  bound  to  come  from  sinking  a  ship  well  loaded 
with  passengers,  many  of  whom  were  sure  to  be  Americans,  was  too  great 
a  responsibility  for  any  man  to  assume.  Nor  is  it  possible  here,  from 
the  standpoint  of  statesmanship,  to  give  weight  to  the  protests  made  by 
an  apologizing  government  that  the  commander  of  the  submarine  had  been 
instructed  to  fire  the  torpedo  in  such  a  manner  that  it  would  serve  as  a 
warning  rather  than  the  knell  of  doom  for  those  aboard  the  vessel  and 
those  owning  and  operating  her. 

It  had  been  shown  quite  recently  in  the  loss  of  the  "Titanic"  that 
ships  of  that  type  could  sink  as  quickly  as  a  plummet.    To  send  a  torpedo 


ALLIED  DIPLOiMACY  IS  EDITOR-IN-CHIEF  231 

into  the  side  of  such  a  structure  was  taking  too  great  a  risk  at  the  expense 
of  a  world  as  yet  not  initiated  into  the  state  of  things  that  was  to  come. 
News  of  the  attack  itself  would  have  been  stunning  enough,  and  might 
have  produced  the  very  result  desired,  to  be  sure,  yet  the  flying  stone 
out  of  the  hand  of  the  thrower  is  the  devil's  weapon,  as  an  old  saying  has  it. 
Tirpitz  et  al  might  have  thought  of  that.  But  it  seems  that  they  did  not 
think  of  it. 

The  combination  of  Belgium  and  Lusitania  was  more  than  Germany 
and  her  allies  could  stand,  especially  since  an  outraged  public  opinion  was 
thereafter  to  be  fed  entirely  on  what  the  British  and  French  governments 
prescribed.  So  far  as  communication  between  Central  Europe  and  the 
Western  Hemisphere  was  concerned,  Great  Britain  and  France  were  in 
absolute  control.  Between  Europe  and  the  Americas  there  was  not  a 
single  cable  which  the  governments  of  the  two  countries  did  not  control, 
and,  as  I  have  shown  already  in  a  preceding  chapter,  that  control  was 
ruthless  in  the  extreme,  especially  when  later  the  confiscation  of  the  mails 
was  undertaken. 

Concerning  public  opinion  vague  notions  are  held.  Those  who  think 
of  it  superficially  seem  to  be  under  the  impression  that  it  is  something  of 
the  mind  of  men  and  women  itself — an  indigenous  product  of  one's 
mentality.  But  that  is  merely  a  snap  judgment.  The  thing  which  in  this 
instance  is  mistaken  for  one's  own  opinion  is  not  the  substance  of  that 
opinion  but  the  faculty  of  being  able  to  form  such  an  opinion.  Tool  and 
handiwork  are  confounded  with  one  another.  It  is  forgotten  that  between 
hammer  and  anvil  there  is  a  substance  that  is  being  shaped,  that  the  anvil 
is  the  sum  total  of  the  individual's  experience  and  the  hammer  the  state 
of  mentality  of  the  moment. 

In  times  of  stress  and  war  the  substance  between  the  two  is  the  news 
of  the  day — the  reports  of  the  event  that  is  engrossing  the  public  mind. 
It  is  the  nature  of  these  reports  which  ultimately  determines  the  quality 
of  public  opinion.  If  these  reports  be  one-sided,  by  reason  of  originating 
almost  entirely  in  the  same  quarter,  then,  public  opinion  necessarily  will 
be  one-sided,  or  partial.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  reports  come  from 
both  sides,  the  public  will  have  a  better  chance  of  forming  an  impartial 
opinion,  because  it  will  make  comparisons,  and  in  the  very  nature  of  things 
one  set  of  reports  will  influence  and  modify  the  other.  The  public  will 
then  be  able  to  form  a  general  opinion  more  or  less  in  harmony  with  the 
local  situation  and  the  elements  of  environment,  as  was  observed  in  the 
case  of  the  small  neutrals  of  Europe,  whose  press  had  access  to  the 
news  from  both  camps  of  belligerents. 

Control  of  the  cables,  and  later  of  the  mails,  by  Great  Britain  and 
France,  placed  in  their  hands  by  the  International  Postal  Conventions,  and 


232  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

later  badly  stretched  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  Entente  group,  made  it 
absolutely  impossible  for  the  American  public  to  ever  get  the  right  focus 
on  affairs  in  Europe.  To  prevent  the  people  of  the  United  States  seeing 
conditions  in  their  proper  light  was  indeed  the  very  purpose  of  the  ruthless 
censorship  applied  in  Great  Britain  and  France,  though  I  should  name  the 
latter  country  first,  because  it  was  by  far  the  meanest  offender.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  the  American  public  saw  only  one  side  of  the  European 
War. 

It  is  not  certain  that  seeing  both  sides  would  have  changed  things  very 
much  in  the  end.  The  affinity  of  the  American  people  toward  the  British 
public  has  always  been  greater  than  that  toward  any  other,  certain! 
historical  facts  taken  into  consideration.  Despite  an  occasional  outbreak 
of  "philism"  for  this  or  that  people  in  Europe  or  elsewhere,  the  A'merican 
public  has  always  been  decidedly  pro-British,  which  need  not  cause  us 
to  wonder,  since  the  two  people  have  much  more  in  common  than  both 
have  been  willing  to  recognise  and  admit.  Community  of  language,  to 
some  extent  history  and  tradition  and  institution,  the  same  literature  and 
an  American  press  that  gathered  four-fifths  of  its  news  in  London  or  relayed 
it  from  there,  and,  lastly  many  close  family  ties  in  the  most  influential  of 
classes  in  the  United  States,  could  not  but  bring  about  a  situation  such 
as  existed  when  Great  Britain  had  been  in  the  War  a  few  months  and  when 
"Belgium"  and  "Lusitania"  were  on  every  lip. 

Though  I  was  thousands  of  miles  away  at  that  time — in  Europe — I 
was  from  the  very  first  half -convinced  that  the  United  States  would  be 
heard  from  before  the  War  was  over,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  during  the 
interview  with  Count  Tisza  just  mentioned  I  had  expressed  the  fear  that 
the  views  of  the  Hungarian  premier  were  all  too  well  founded.  When  in 
spite  of  his  convictions.  Count  Tisza  still  hoped  for  the  best,  and  therewith 
coupled  that  it  would  be  an  injustice  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Wilson  not  to 
see  that  there  was  every  element  of  justification  behind  the  stand  the 
Central  Powers  had  taken  on  "submarine  versus  supramarine  blockade,"  I 
mentioned  casually  that  the  German- Austrians  would  in  all  probability  take 
the  German  view  of  a  thing  no  matter  what  that  view  was  and  that  the 
effect  of  racial  affinity  would  be  the  same  the  other  way.  I  pointed  out 
that  the  very  use  of  the  same  language  was  all  that  was  necessary  to  bring 
this  about,  for  the  reason  that  use  of  the  same  speech  would  have  made 
the  mind  of  the  one  the  more  receptive  for  the  arguments  and  appeals  of 
the  other.  What  the  voice  of  a  mother  is  to  her  children,  language  is  to 
peoples  using  it.  It  wakes  in  both  cases  the  dormant  memories  of  a  common 
past  and  calls  both  to  thoughts  for  the  future  even  if,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
United  States  population,  such  relationship  concerns  ethnologically  but  two- 
fifths  of  the  people. 


ALLIED  DIPLOMACY  IS  EDITOR-IN-CHIEF  233 

Mr.  Melville  E.  Stone,  general  manager  of  the  Associated  Press  of 
America,  had,  on  October  5th,  1914,  already  found  the  censorship  situation 
in  London  "extraordinary."  The  fact  was  that  little  of  the  copy  written 
by  four  Americans  in  Berlin,  an  Englishman  in  Vienna,  and  myself  and  an 
assistant  at  The  Hague  was  getting  to  New  York.  The  report  of  the  seven 
correspondents  was  very  heavy,  usually,  running  from  3,000  to  5,000 
cable  words  every  day,  and  reaching  on  several  occasions  the  total  of  8,000, 
especially  when  one  of  the  correspondents  of  the  service  had  been  able  to 
get  into  Holland  from  Belgium  and  was  writing  from  there  uncontrolled 
by  the  German  censors. 

When  the  American  Press  Was  Less  Partial 

In  those  early  days  of  the  War  both  sides  were  still  wanted  by  the 
American  press,  despite  the  fate  of  Belgium.  On  September  21st,  1914, 
Mr.  Stone  wrote  me  as  follows : 

"There  is  not  quite  as  much  color  in  it  as  I  would  like. 
(This  in  reference  to  the  matter  written  by  one  of  the  men  at 
Berlin.)  By  color  I  mean  descriptive  of  the  conditions  in  Ger- 
many: home  life,  farm  life,  etc.,  scenes  and  incidents  in  Berlin 
which  might  be  of  human  interest.  I  do  not  mean  too  much  of 
this  and,  therefore,  I  hesitate  to  make  this  suggestion.  The  Berlin 
report  seems  to  be  rather  dry  and  of  course  necessarily  meagre. 

You  might  forward  these  suggestions  to (here  follows 

the  name  of  the  man).  *  *  *     Again,  it  would  be  well  to  ask 

if  he  could  confer  with  the  German  authorities  and  see 

if  there  would  be  any  possibility  of  an  Associated  Press  cor- 
respondent or  two  going  with  the  German  army.  Advise  him  that 
the  British  and  French  have  absolutely  refused  to  allow  any 
American  correspondents  with  their  armies  and  I  should  think, 
under  the  circumstances  the  Germans  might  be  willing  to  do  it 
and  the  reports  from  these  correspondents  might  come  out  by 
wireless  or  through  you.  Of  course  they  would  have  to  be  handled 
carefully  in  order  to  pass  the  British  censorship  which  surpasses 
anything  I  have  ever  known  for  stupidity." 

For  the  purpose  of  dealing  with  the  "extraordinary  situation"  in 
London  I  had  inaugurated,  largely  at  first  to  make  proper  accounting 
for  the  considerable  sums  of  money  I  was  paying  out  in  cable  tolls,  for 
my  own,  and  the  relayed  matter  from  Berlin,  a  system  of  numbering 
dispatches  and  keeping  two  carbon  copies  of  each.  One  set  of  these  copies, 
together  with  a  list  of  dispatches  and  the  number  of  words  contained  in 
each,  I  would  forward  at  the  end  of  each  fortnight  to  the  Associated  Press 
office  at  London,  and  the  other  set  of  copies  and  records  to  New  York. 
The  counting  of  the  words  was  necessary  to  prove  first  that  the  toll  sheet 


234  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

was  right,  secondly,  how  much  of  the  dispatch  had  been  suppressed  by  the 
British  censors,  and  what  interpolations  had  been  made,  if  any,  while  the 
numbering  showed  easily  what  dispatches  had  been  **killed"  entirely.  It 
was  in  this  manner  learned  what  great  sums  were  being  spent  by  the  service 
for  nothing.  Not  enough  with  suppressing  the  dispatches,  the  British 
government  did  not  refund  the  tolls  on  telegrams  it  did  not  deliver. 

On  September  3rd  I  received  a  letter  from  Robert  M.  Collins,  the 
chief  of  the  London  Bureau  of  the  service,  in  which  he  complained  that 
a  large  number  of  my  dispatches  had  been  held  up,  the  censor  being  in 
this  instance  kind  enough  to  inform  him  that  the  cables  in  question  would 
not  be  delivered. 

In  reply  I  wrote  in  part : 

"Dispatches  from  German  war  correspondents  reveal  the 
location  of  French  and  English  troops  and  while  this  in  itself  may 
be  of  little  importance  to  the  public  such  data  are  almost  indispen- 
sable to  an  intelligent  description  of  the  action.  I  have  written  my 
stories  so  that  they  would  give  the  least  possible  degree  of  offense 
to  the  censors — with  the  feeling,  however,  that  I  was  successfully 
ham-strung.  Some  directions  from  you  on  this  subject,  and 
suggestions  as  to  the  betterment  of  copy  would  be  highly  ap- 
preciated. Naturally,  I  am  curious  to  know  how  much  of  my 
stuff  gets  through.  You  might  devote  some  spare  moment  to 
dropping  me  a  line  on  this  subject." 

The  censors  had  in  this  case  advanced  the  argument  that  my  dispatches 
contained  military  information.  Since  I  was  not  at  the  front  I  had  gathered 
that  "military"  information  from  Dutch  and  German  newspapers  and  the 
private  report  of  the  "Nieuwe  Rotterdamsche  Courant"  to  which  I  had 
access  before  publication  in  that  paper.  If  there  was  "military"  informa- 
tion in  my  copy  it  could  be  of  interest  only  to  the  British  and  French  and 
in  no  way  harmful  to  them,  since  it  came  from  the  side  of  the  Germans. 
Accepting  that  it  was  possible  to  get  news  into  Germany,  over  the  Sayville 
wireless  system — the  United  States  being  the  destination  of  my  dispatches — 
no  stretch  of  the  imagination  would  permit  the  British  censors  to  claim  that 
the  "military"  information  I  picked  up  in  Holland,  be  it  from  the  news 
service  in  question,  or  the  newspapers,  was  not  already  at  the  disposal  of 
the  German  general  staff.  My  dispatches  were  going  away  from  Germany 
and  not  into  it,  and  for  this  reason  the  contention  raised  in  London 
was  based  on  something  else — ^keeping  the  public  of  the  United  States  in 
ignorance  of  what  was  going  on. 

But  the  British  censors  stoutly  continued  to  defend  their  untenable 
position.  Mr.  Frederick  Roy  Martin,  assistant  general  manager  of  the 
Associated  Press,  then  active  in  London,  wrote  me  a  letter  similar  to  that 
of  Mr.  Collins,  to  which  on  September  15th,  I  replied — in  part: 


WHEN  THE  AMERICAN  PRESS  WAS  LESS  PARTIAL    235 

"Already  the  coast  districts  (of  the  Netherlands)  are  in  'staat 
van  beleg,'  equivalent  of  state  of  siege,  and  while  I  was  at  Vaals 
the  'gemeente'  Rotterdam — country  districts  of  this  city — was 
added  to  districts  under  military  control." 

I  meant  to  say  by  that,  that  it  was  impossible  to  maintain  across  the 
frontiers  of  Holland  such  an  efficient  "military"  information  service  as  the 
London  censors  seemed  to  believe.  The  fact  was  that  their  own  army 
and  that  of  the  French  permitted  no  war  correspondents  to  be  present  in 
the  zone  of  action,  and  that  such  highly  entertaining  "news  from  the  front," 
as  was  then  being  dished  out  to  the  British  and  American  publics,  through 
English  and  French  channels,  was  the  product  of  the  imagination.  With 
this  the  stories  written  by  the  American  correspondents  who  were  ad- 
mitted to  the  German  front,  although  only  for  days  at  a  time,  could  not 
possibly  agree. 

It  was  not  merely  a  case  of  reserving  all  possible  space  in  the  press 
of  the  United  States  for  reading  matter  of  British  and  French  origin  and 
tendency,  but  to  also  keep  up  the  appearance  of  authenticity  of  that  matter. 
Up  to  that  time,  it  will  be  remembered,  the  German  army  had  things  its 
own  way,  a  state  of  affairs  which  the  battle  of  the  Marne  had  indeed 
changed  somewhat  but  not  enough  to  make  any  material  difference  in  the 
general  situation,  which  was  anything  but  promising  to  the  Entente.  News- 
paper matter  from  Holland  and  Germany  would  have  shown,  at  the  very 
least,  that  there  was  a  great  discrepancy  between  the  accounts  from  the 
two  sides,  and  that  would  have  led  to  questioning  of  an  unwelcome  sort 
for  the  British  and  French,  since  the  general  aspect  favored  the  versions 
from  the  German  side. 

The  British  Censors  Were  a  Touchy  Lot 

Meanwhile  the  British  censors  had  complained  that  the  reports  of  the 
Associated  Press  correspondents  in  Berlin  and  The  Hague  were  one-sided. 
My  reply  to  Mr.  Martin  on  September  18th  was  in  part  as  follows: 

"I  don't  know  what  can  be  done  to  make  our  service  from 
here  look  more  neutral.  It  would  be  folly  to  repeat  to  London 
what  comes  from  London,  Paris  and  Petrograd.  That  I  am  taking 
the  best  care  of  the  Belgian  side,  as  far  as  I  do  so  by  means  of 
the  local  specials  has  been  demonstrated,  I  believe.  You  will  agree 
with  me  that  a  split  service  such  as  this,  must  of  necessity  appear 
one-sided — just  as  one-sided  as  others  could  claim  of  the  service 
out  of  London.  I  am  sure  that  '^r.  Conger  exercises  the  greatest 
caution — and  I  am  doing  the  same." 

In  explanation  of  the  above  I  wish  to  state  that  the  British  censors  had 
complained  that  the  stories  coming  from  the  Continent  were  one-sided 


236  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

in  so  far  as  they  did  not  mention  the  British  and  French  troops  except 
as  the  enemies  of  the  Germans.  I  suppose,  the  matter  originating  on  the 
other  side  referred  to  the  Germans  and  Austro-Hungarians  as  friends. 
As  I  said  in  my  letter  it  would  have  been  "folly  to  repeat  to  London  what 
comes  from  London,  Paris  and  Pctrograd.'*  The  American  news  services 
could  get  that  in  London,  without  having  to  station  men  on  the  continent 
and  investing  more  money  in  cable  tolls  which  usually  resulted  in  nothing 
practical. 

It  having  meanwhile  been  shown  to  the  management  of  the  Associated 
Press  that  the  British  and  French  governments  were  bent  upon  nothing 
less  than  withholding  from  the  American  public  the  material  upon  which 
an  intelligent  view  of  the  War  could  be  based,  I  was  instructed  to  write 
a  weekly  resume  of  the  military  activities.  With  the  first  one  of  these, 
I  forwarded  on  September  20th  to  Mr.  Martin  a  letter  which  I  will  quote 
the  essentials  of : 

"I  hope  you  will  find  the  discussion  as  impartial  as  it  should 
be  and  as  I  have  been  trying  hard  to  make  it.  You  will  notice 
that  there  is  no  reference  to  the  question  of  whether  or  no  this  war 
was  started  by  this  or  that  party,  or  whether  or  no  it  is  justifiable. 
I  have  dealt  altogether  with  military  aspects  and  facts,  and  while 
telling  the  truth  has  latterly  become  a  punishable  offense,  I  felt 
that  nevertheless  the  information  contained  in  my  screed  might 
be  welcome." 

But  what  the  American  newspapers  wanted  was  not  a  weekly  resume 
that  would  be  stale  by  the  time  it  reached  them,  but  what  is  known  as 
"hot-off-the-wire  stuff."  The  New  York  office  of  the  Associated  Press 
kept  up  importuning  the  London  bureau,  and  Mr.  Collins  would  promptly 
relay  these  "kicks"  to  me,  knowing  only  too  well,  however,  that  all  this 
was  useless.  On  September  24th  I  wrote  a  letter  to  Mr.  Stone,  the  general 
manager,  for  the  purpose  of  letting  him  know  what  the  position  of  the 
staff  on  the  Continent  was.    It  said  partly: 

"I  am  bringing  this  matter  to  your  attention,  because  I  for- 
warded to  the  New  York  office  last  week  the  copies  of  the  dis- 
patches censored — delivered  and  suppressed.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  by  looking  over  these  copies  you  may  be  able  to  get  a  fair 
picture  of  what  British  censorship  is. 

"Though  I  have  no  means  of  knowing  now  what  the  dis- 
patches dealt  with,  I  take  it  for  granted  that  most  of  them  were 
'Wolff'  taken  from  the  Nieuwe  Rotterdamsche  C  our  ant,  or  pos- 
sibly specials  of  that  paper.  At  the  time  when  these  dispatches 
were  filed,  I  used  a  great  deal  of  the  matter  supplied  that  paper 
by  an  excellent  staff  of  correspondents,  sending  no  Renter  or 
Havas,  of  course." 

The  dispatches  of  the  Renter  and  Havas  semi-official  agencies  of  Great 


THE  BRITISH  CENSORS  WERE  A  TOUCHY  LOT      23? 

Britain  and  France,  respectively,  came  into  Holland  via  London,  of  course, 
and  where  forwarded  by  the  London  bureau  of  the  service  long  before 
I  saw  them  in  The  Hague  or  Rotterdam.  The  service  of  the  Nieuwe 
Rotterdamsche  Courant  dealt  largely  with  the  state  of  things  in  Belgium, 
and  was  of  the  highest  quality.  It  has  been  said  that  my  use  of  it  resulted 
in  the  relief  work  which  was  later  done  in  Belgium,  because  through  these 
dispatches  the  hardships  suffered  by  the  Belgian  population  were  first 
made  known. 

The  New  York  general  management  of  the  service  persisted  in  its 
endeavor  to  get  more  news  of  the  German  side  of  the  War.  The  full 
purpose  of  the  British  and  French  censorships  being  as  yet  not  entirely 
understood,  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Charles  E.  Kloeber,  chief  of  the  news  division 
of  the  Associated  Press,  on  October  3rd,  a  letter  which  I  think  will  stand 
citing  a  second  time : 

"However,  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  carry  on  this  most 
unsatisfactory  sort  of  labor.  Meanwhile,  I  may  not  have  to  tell 
you  that  the  English  censor  is  not  concerned  with  suppressing 
military  news  as  much  as  news  favorable  to  Germany — which  of 
course  is  the  same  thing  in  the  end.  I  suspect  strongly  that  some 
nine  interviews  I  secured  from  Americans,  returning  from  various 
parts  of  Germany,  on  August  19th,  never  reached  the  London 
office,  though  the  term  "mobilization"  was  the  only  military  word 
used  in  them.  At  any  rate  I  saw  in  one  of  the  American  papers 
the  bare  announcement  that  a  special  train  from  Berlin  had  arrived 
in  Rotterdam  with  some  300  refugees  aboard.  After  that  I 
feared  the  worst,  of  course,  and  a  few  days  later  Mr.  Patterson, 
of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  told  me  that  he  had  good  reason  to 
believe  that  the  English  censors  went  so  far  as  to  interpolate  their 
own  views  into  copy.  What  a  person  can  do,  with  that  sort  of 
'scrutiny'  on  the  other  end  of  the  wire,  I  really  don't  know." 

Shortly  after  this,  I  was  instructed  by  Mr.  Stone  to  go  to  Berlin  in 
an  effort  to  improve  the  service  from  the  countries  of  the  Central  Powers. 
If  possible,  I  was  to  go  to  the  West  front  and  stay  there.  But  I  found 
the  German  general  staff  was  not  interested  in  having  foreign  correspond- 
ents permanently  at  its  press  headquarters.  The  personally-conducted 
parties  that  were  made  every  two  weeks  or  so  did  not  interest  me  very 
much,  and  so  I  decided  to  try  my  luck  with  the  Austro-Hungarian  army. 
In  this  effort  I  was  more  successful.  I  was  admitted  as  a  permanent  mem- 
ber of  the  war  press  headquarters,  but  found  that  I  was  expected  to  write 
only  of  those  things  which  were  thought  advantageous  to  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  government  and  Germany.  After  living  in  muddy,  cholera- 
infected  and  typhus-stricken  Galicia  for  a  while,  and  following  in  the 
tracks  of  General  Potiorek  in  Serbia  for  another  few  weeks,  seeing  the 
Russians  break  into  Hungary  and  visiting  no  end  of  hospitals,  I  decided 


238  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

that  I  was  not  worth  my  salt  to  the  service,  and  took  such  steps  as  I 
deemed  necessary,  an  outline  of  which  will  be  found  in  the  following  letter 
to  Mr.  Stone,  the  general  manager,  dated  December  12th : 

"I  found  that  it  did  not  pay  the  Associated  Press  to  keep  a 
man  with  the  Austro-Hungarian  'Kriegspressequartier,'  and  asked 
for  my  relief.  After  this  had  been  given  me,  I  was  asked 
to  present  the  case  in  person  at  general  staff  headquarters.  This 
I  did,  but  no  improvement  could  be  promised.  I  decided  then  to 
leave.  Old  battlefields  may  be  seen  every  day,  but,  as  I  told 
the  officer  in  charge  of  the  correspondents,  those  are  of  greater 
interest  to  the  military  critic  and  historian  than  to  the  American 
public." 

Contradicting  an  English  Balkan  ''Expert" 

Cholera,  typhus,  small-pox,  "kooties,"  mud  and  what  not  considered, 
life  at  the  Austro-Hungarian  war  press  headquarters  was  most  agreeable, 
but  it  did  not  lead  to  much  copy  that  was  worth  while — everything  being 
personally  conducted  and  explained,  which  explanation  the  military  censors 
were  in  the  habit  of  paying  too  much  attention  to  when  reading  our  dis- 
patches afterward. 

Shortly  thereafter  I  found  myself  in  the  Balkans.  I  had  been  instructed 
to  study  the  situation  there,  because  already  the  London  press  was  sure 
that  before  long  the  entire  peninsula  would  be  at  war  with  the  Germans 
and  their  ally.  I  found  that  this  was  not  so,  as  I  have  shown  in  previous 
chapters,  and  thereby  made  myself  a  very  bad  reputation  in  London.  The 
views  of  Mr.  J.  D.  Bourchier,  the  well  known  correspondent  of  the  London 
Titnes,  on  the  Balkan,  were  very  interesting,  no  doubt,  but  lacked  a  proper 
realization  of  the  actual  conditions.  Nevertheless,  here  was  an  American 
newspaper  man  who  undertook  to  contradict  Mr.  Bourchier — without 
knowing  at  the  time  what  Mr.  Bourchier  was  writing.  The  result  of  this 
was  that  the  British  censors  invited  Mr.  Martin,  the  assistant  general 
manager  of  the  Associated  Press,  to  find  another  sphere  of  activity  for  me. 
Mr.  Martin  refused  to  do  this  on  the  ground  that,  as  he  put  it  at  the  time, 
the  Associated  Press  was  running  its  own  business. 

To  send  a  man  so  marked  to  Constantinople  was  a  risky  undertaking, 
yet  it  was  done.  But  Mr.  Martin  was  wise  enough  to  "expect  mostly  mail 
matter"  from  there,  knowing  too  well  that  this  would  be  the  only  means 
of  getting  news  from  that  part  of  the  world  past  the  British  censors.  The 
mail  was  yet  secure  so  long  as  it  avoided  British  ports,  as  did  some  of  the 
steamers  plying  between  New  York  and  Norway,  and  a  little  later  Mr. 
Martin  was  able  to  write  me: 

"Your  mail  matter  is  extensively  used  and  I  think  we  got  it 

all.    Your  cabled  matter  is  slaughtered,  naturally." 


CONTRADICTING  AN  ENGLISH  BALKAN  EXPERT      239 

Quite  unexpectedly  my  account  of  the  action  of  the  Allied  fleet  against 
the  Turkish  coast  batteries  along  the  Dardanelles,  on  March  18th  had 
gotten  past  the  British  censors.  On  March  26th  I  received  the  following 
telegram : 

"Roy  Martin  telegraphs  congratulations  excellent  story 
eighteenth  first  delivered  us  by  cable  stop  reached  here  twenty 
fourth  stop  spare  no  expense  accelerate  to  damon." 

The  burden  of  this  message  was  that  the  British  censors  had  sup- 
pressed every  cable  of  mine  which  I  had  written  from  the  Dardanelles — 
eleven  in  number  up  to  that  time,  as  my  records  show,  totalling  9782 
words,  and  dealing  with  the  futile  attempts  to  silence  the  Turkish  batteries, 
delivered  from  March  1st  to  March  12th,  1915.  The  dispatch  of  March 
18th,  the  British  censors,  even,  could  not  suppress,  because  the  world  was 
bound  to  learn  anyway  of  the  defeat  of  the  Allied  armada,  and  the  total 
loss  of  three  battleships,  besides  the  placing  hors  de  combat  of  five  others, 
and  the  mauling  which  the  super-dreadnaught  "Queen  Elizabeth"  received 
from  the  howitzers.  The  magnanimity  of  the  British  censors  was  great, 
therefore.  It  brought  me  a  message  of  appreciation  and  the  instruction 
to  spare  no  expense  even  in  face  of  the  fact  that  so  far  I  had  invested 
several  thousand  dollars  in  cable  and  telegraph  tolls,  every  cent  of  which 
was  wasted. 

I  had  by  that  time  learned  enough  of  British  censorship  to  know 
that  in  order  to  get  matter  through  I  would  have  to  dwell  strongly  on  the 
shortcomings  of  the  people  I  was  with.  The  Turkish  censors  at  the 
Dardanelles  I  had  convinced  of  the  necessity  of  this,  but  the  censors  at 
Constantinople,  whom  I  could  not  reach  from  the  scene  of  action,  could 
not  take  as  lenient  a  view.  The  result  was  that  I  had  a  great  deal  of 
trouble  with  them.  To  get  around  that  I  instructed  Mr.  Theron  Damon, 
my  assistant  at  Constantinople,  to  have  my  despatches  censored  at  the 
bureau  of  the  German  Military  Mission  to  Turkey,  where  my  difficulties 
were  understood.  To  Major  Fischer  I  had  explained  that  I  would 
have  to  accompany  each  dispatch  with  something  that  was  not  compli- 
mentary to  the  Turks  and  the  Germans  in  order  to  get  it  past  the  British 
censors.  The  major  saw  the  point  and  undertook  to  be  of  help.  But  the 
scheme  was  no  great  success.  There  were  men  in  Berlin  who  were  sure 
that  I  was  the  worst  Germanophobe  there  ever  lived. 

From  the  Berlin  bureau  of  the  service  I  received,  on  April  2nd,  the 
following  message: 

"Oberkommando  Berlin  declines  accept  as  sufficient  censoring 
on  your  copy  by  military  mission  Constantinople  and  insists  on 
right  recensor  matter  remailed  at  berlin  might  avoid  delays  if  you 
could  mail  direct  to  berry." 


240  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Mr.  Berry,  I  must  explain  was  then  the  correspondent  at  The  Hague. 
The  gravamen  involved  telegrams  as  well  as  mail  matter.  "Oberkommando" 
was  the  title  of  general  military  headquarters  for  the  province  of  Branden- 
burg at  Berlin. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  Stone,  was  trying  to  get  in  touch  with  me  from  New 
York  direct.  He  knew  that  I  was  at  the  Dardanelles,  and  knew  further 
that  an  effort  was  being  made  by  the  Allied  fleet  to  force  the  straits.  The 
"story"  was  of  the  first  magnitude  and  so  far  he  had  seen  no  dispatch 
from  me  on  the  subject.  The  thousand  odd  members  of  the  Associated 
Press  found  it  strange  that  the  only  news  from  the  Dardanelles  should 
come  from  British  sources  and  there  was  much  importuning,  with  the  result 
that  my  incommunicado  in  Turkey  had  to  be  explained.  The  general 
manager  thought  that  he  might  help  me  with  some  suggestions,  as  indeed 
he  could  have  done  under  different  conditions.  He  was  finally  able  to  get 
a  wire  to  me  through  the  American  embassy  in  Constantinople.  It  read : 
"Send  matter  via  athens  address  elmer  roberts  thirteen  place 

bourse  paris.    American  embassy." 

Since  I  had  already  established  that  the  cables  beyond  Athens  were 
being  watched  by  a  double-crew  of  French  and  British  censors,  I  felt  that 
little  would  come  of  this  suggestion,  but  carried  it  into  effect,  nevertheless, 
by  filing  my  dispatches  in  duplicate.  But  that  avenue  for  getting  news  to 
the  American  public  was  quite  as  effectively  closed  as  the  one  Constan- 
tinople-Constanza-Budapest-Berlin-The  lla.gue-London. 

Mr.  Martin  also  was  again  in  despair.  Though  he  knew  what  the 
trouble  was  and  what  little  there  could  be  done,  he  wired  me  under  date, 
March  14th  as  follows: 

"Wire  daily  graphic  story"  .... 

It  is  possible  that  he  intended  no  more  than  to  remind  the  British 
censors  that  such  matter  was  wanted,  and  that  as  yet  the  press  of  the 
United  States  was  not  content  with  hearing  the  one  side  only. 

In  Press  Diplomacy  First  Version  Counts 

An  attempt  made  to  get  dispatches  to  New  York  under  diplomatic 
privileges  also  failed,  and  the  Turkish  authorities  soon  put  a  stop  to  news 
dispatches  routed  via  Athens,  being  afraid  that  I  might  inadvertently,  if 
not  intentionally,  supply  the  Allied  fleet  with  "military"  information  of 
value.  At  any  rate,  Mr.  Damon,  the  man  at  the  base  in  Constantinople, 
wired  me  at  Tchanak  Kale  that : 

"Suggestions  paris  or  athens  unfavored  here." 

Five  dispatches  had  meanwhile  been  routed  that  way  without  anything 
being  accomplished.    I  finally  suggested  to  Mr.  Damon  to  take  the  matter 


IN  PRESS  DIPLOMACY  FIRST  VERSION  COUNTS      241 

up  with  Talaat  Bey,  the  Ottoman  minister  of  the  interior,  but  nothing 
came  of  this.  I  was  at  the  straits  and  not  in  position  to  explain  to 
everybody  that  my  dispatches  had  to  be  impartial,  and,  for  the  edification 
of  the  censors  in  London  and  Paris,  partial  to  the  Entente  cause,  in  order 
to  get  them  through. 

News  of  the  great  action  at  the  Dardanelles  had  first  reached  the  world 
through  British  channels.  It  occurred  on  March  18th,  and  on  the  22nd  my 
anxiously-awaited  story  of  it  had  not  yet  been  received  in  New  York.  It 
later  developed  that  it  took  the  British  government  four  days  to  make  up 
its  mind  whether  or  no  this  dispatch  of  mine  should  also  go  into  the 
censor's  wastepaper  basket.  Mr.  Martin  was  going  from  one  government 
office  to  another  to  get  my  story  released  for  transmission  to  New  York, 
its  arrival  having  been  announced.  He  was  informed  on  this  occasion 
that  this  was  not  the  only  dispatch  of  mine,  which  was  resting  securely 
in  the  care  of  the  censor,  that  "there  were  stacks  of  them."  But  the 
British  version,  which,  by  the  way,  was  a  very  pretty  concoction,  had  to 
be  given  time  to  have  its  effect. 

Mr.  Stone  brought  the  case  to  the  attention  of  the  Department  of 
State,  as  the  result  of  which  I  received,  through  the  American  embassy 
at  Constantinople,  the  following  cable: 

Washington  7^  45  23  4-40. 

"523  twenty-second  for  George  A.  Schreiner  quote  no  word 
from  you  since  twelfth  stop  think  you  could  do  better  if  were  in 
touch  with  Tenedos  or  other  British  cable  points  stop  London  and 
French  especially  come  through  without  difficulty  stop  Melville  E. 
Stone  unquote.  Bryan." 

The  advice  that  I  cable  via  Tenedos  shows  how  poorly  informed  even 
the  general  manager  of  the  Associated  Press  was  in  regard  to  general  con- 
ditions. The  island  in  question  does  indeed  have  some  sort  of  telegraphic 
connection,  but  it  was  just  then  the  main  base  of  the  Allied  fleet,  attacking 
the  Dardanelles  batteries.  On  the  other  hand,  the  assurances  of  the  British 
government  that  commercial  and  press  dispatches  were  not  being  interfered 
with  when  they  had  no  military  information  was  fooling  many — ^the 
American  government  included.  Mr.  Stone  had  been  led  to  think  that 
Constantinople  and  Berlin  censors  were  to  blame. 

By  that  time  the  status  of  the  telegrams,  cables  and  mail  of  the 
United  States  diplomatic  missions  abroad  had  been  settled,  Mr.  Bryan, 
then  secretary  of  state,  having  undertaken  as  far  back  as  November  25th, 
1914,  to  get  into  clear  water  on  this  subject.  It  had  been  agreed  that  "in 
view  of  an  understanding  between  United  States  and  belligerent  countries 
regarding  inviolability  of  Department's  diplomatic  and  consular  correspond- 
ence," the  following  rules  should  be  observed: 


242  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

'''Communications  from  private  individuals  or  institutions 
to  private  individuals  or  institutions  in  the  United  States  should 
not  be  sent  in  Department  pouches.     *     *     * 

"The  Department  reserves  the  right  to  censor  all  mail  received 
in  the  pouches." 

This  done  the  United  States  government  surrendered  the  highways 
and  byways  of  international  communication  to  the  British  and  French 
government  and  took  notice  of  the  conditions  on  them  only  when  some 
commercial  cables  had  been  delayed  with  loss  to  the  party  interested.  Now 
and  then,  to  be  sure,  press  cables  were  mentioned  in  the  diplomatic  cor- 
respondence but  nothing  ever  came  of  that. 

We  must  turn  to  the  American  White  Papers  to  see  what  was  done. 

After  many  protests  made  during  the  first  two  weeks  of  the  War  and 
application  of  censorship  the  British  Foreign  Office  informed  Ambassador 
W.  H.  Page  as  follows: 

"As  regards  enquiries  respecting  the  delivery  of  such  mes- 
sages as  may  have  been  stopped  in  the  public  interest  it  does  not 
appear  to  be  practicable  to  remove  the  prohibition  on  such  en- 
quiries without  impairing  the  usefulness  of  the  censorship." 

This  meant  that  the  British  government  would  continue  to  refuse  to 
give  information  as  to  cables  which  had  been  suppressed. 

On  September  26th,  1914,  Mr.  Lansing,  the  acting  secretary  of  state, 
felt  called  upon  to  transmit  the  following  to  the  American  ambassador  at 
London : 

"The  department  has  received  a  great  many  protests  from 
commercial  houses  and  boards  of  trade  and  transportation 
throughout  the  United  States  in  regard  to  the  suppression  by 
British  censors  of  cable  communications  to  and  from  neutral 
countries.  This  considerably  interferes  with  legitimate  foreign 
commerce  between  the  United  States  and  neutral  countries.  You 
may  present  the  matter  to  the  British  Foreign  Office  with  the  sug- 
gestion that  the  department  deems  it  very  desirable  to  discontinue  . 
suppressing  harmless  commercial  cables." 

All  that  could  be  sent  in  reply  to  this  by  Mr.  Page  was  a  laconic: 

"No  change  in  censorship  regulations." 

Mr.  Lansing  Thought  It  More  Courteous 

By  October  5th,  Mr.  Page  had  taken  the  matter  up  with  Sir  Edward 
Grey,  who,  according  to  a  cable  to  the  secretary  of  state,  dated  13th,  con- 
firmed merely  what  had  already  been  placed  on  record,  i.  e. :  that  no  m- 
formation  would  be  given  in  regard  to  suppressed  cablegrams.  On  the 
following  day,  Mr.  Lansing,  thought  "that  notification  of  non-delivery 


MR.  LANSING  THOUGHT  IT  MORE  COURTEOUS       243 

would  be  more  courteous  and  just,"  and  meanwhile  much  effort  was  being 
wasted  on  a  trifle :  Attempts  to  remove  the  stipulation  of  British  censor- 
ship that  signatures  and  addresses  of  cablegrams  should  be  given  in  full. 
Information  in  regard  to  suppressed  cables  would  have  involved  a 
refunding  of  tolls  in  the  end,  and  for  that  reason,  the  British  government, 
from  motives  best  known  to  itself,  never  swerved  for  an  instant  from  the 
position  it  had  taken.  In  spite  of  that  the  subject  of  returning  the  costs 
of  cables  in  case  of  non-delivery  had  to  be  made  the  object  of  official 
correspondence.  A  communication  from  the  office  of  the  British  post- 
master general,  dated  November  2nd,  1914,  says : 

"I  am  directed  by  the  Postmaster  General  to  point  out  that 
Article  8  of  the  International  Telegraph  Convention  reserves  to 
each  of  the  contracting  states  the  right  of  suspending  the  inter- 
national telegraph  service  for  an  indefinite  period.  Such  a  notice 
was  issued  by  the  British  Government  when  the  present  emergency 
arose,  but  in  order  to  avoid  the  inconvenience  which  would  have 
arisen  from  a  total  stoppage  of  communication  it  was  decided  as 
an  act  of  grace  to  accept  telegrams  for  transmission  on  the  under- 
standing that  they  were  to  be  accepted  at  the  sender's  risk  and 
subject  to  censorship  by  the  British  authorities ;  that  is,  that  they 
might  be  stopped,  delayed,  or  otherwise  dealt  with  by  the  censors, 
and  that  no  claim  for  reimbursement  could  be  entertained." 

That  was  a  very  frank  statement  of  the  conditions,  of  course.  Stop- 
page meant  suppression,  and  delay  might  amount  to  the  same.  The 
"dealing  otherwise"  might  mean  the  interpolation  of  matter  promotive  of 
British  interests  throughout  the  world  over  whatever  signature  the  cable- 
gram had. 

The  case  went  so  far  that  Mr.  Hoffman,  President  of  the  Swiss 
Confederation,  came  to  occupy  himself  with  it.   But  even  that  did  not  help. 

On  December  2,  of  the  same  year,  Mr.  Page  cabled  to  the  secretary 
of  state  as  follows: 

"I  have  just  received  the  following  statement  from  Sir 
Edward  Grey: 

"In  connection  with  complaints  about  both  press  and  com- 
mercial cables,  I  can  make  no  progress  without  specific  instances 
of  difficulties.  The  censorship  asks  that  the  names  of  the  ad- 
dressees and  senders  of  stopped  telegrams  should  be  given  in  order 
that  inquiry  may  be  made.  The  chief  censor  is  willing  to  make 
most  searching  inquiry,  and  if  it  is  found  that  any  message  has 
been  stopped  without  sufficient  />nwa  facie  grounds,  all  the  neces- 
sary steps  will  be  taken  to  prevent  the  occurrence  of  similar  cases 
in  future.  The  chief  censor  would  indeed  welcome  specific  in- 
stances, as  they  would  possibly  be  accompanied  by  evidence  of  the 
innocence  of  messages  that  have  appearance  of  being  suspicious 
and  this  might  give  a  clue  to  the  nature  of  a  whole  class  of  mes- 


244  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

sages.  The  chief  censor  is  confident  that  American  and  Swiss 
telegrams  are  not  being  stopped  wantonly,  but  only  when  there 
appears  on  the  face  of  them  good  reasons  for  supposing  that  they 
may  be  improper  messages." 

It  was  ever  hard  to  establish  in  censorship  matters  that  anything  is 
prima  facie.  It  all  depends  on  what  is  considered  "military"  information 
and  what  is  not.  As  the  Great  War  progressed  information  of  any  sort 
was  given  a  military  character,  if  the  censors  so  pleased.  As  to  specific 
instances — there  were  enough  of  them:  The  London  Bureau  of  the 
Associated  Press  alone  had  by  that  time  over  two  hundred  cases  of  sup- 
pression, in  which  both  the  sender  and  addressee  were  known.  One  must 
wonder  that  the  government  of  the  United  States  accepted  this  cynical 
explanation  of  the  case  as  complacently  as  it  did,  and  that  there  was  nobody 
in  the  Department  of  State  f  arsighted  and  public-spirited  enough  to  realize, 
in  those  pre-Lusitania  days,  that  it  was  in  the  interest  of  the  American 
public  to  know  both  sides,  whether  culpability  for  the  war  had  been  already 
decided  upon  or  not.  The  people  of  the  United  States  were  then  still 
sitting  in  the  jury  box  as  it  were,  and  their  attorney,  the  government  in 
Washington,  was  in  duty  bound  to  present  the  evidence  of  both  sides. 

My  experience  with  censorship  in  Turkey  was  rather  diflferent.  When- 
ever a  dispatch  of  mine  was  suppressed,  or  when  a  part  of  it  had  been 
"blue-pencilled"  out  of  it,  I  would  receive  on  the  following  day  a  letter 
of  which  the  following  is  an  example : 

Direction  Generale  des  Postes,  Telegraphes  et  Telephones  Ottomans. 

Bureau  Central  de  Pera. 
No.  76. 

Pera,  le  31  Mai,  1915. 
"Monsieur : 

"Je  viens  vous  informer  que  pour  votre  telegramme  No. 
2315,  date  du  28  Mai,  1915,  pour  Berlin,  il  a  ete  pergu  par 
erreur  deux  piastres  vingt  paras  en  plus.  Je  vous  prie  done  de 
faire  retirer  susdite  somme  de  la  Caisse  de  notre  bureau  avec  le 
recepisse  y  relatif  pour  etre  rectifie. 

"Agreez,  Monsieur,  I'assurance  de  ma  consideration  dis- 
tinguee. 

Le  Directeur, 
du  Bureau  Central  Telegraphique  de  Pera. 
(Signed)    " 

Translation — 
"Sir: 

"I  would  inform  that  for  your  telegram  No.  2315,  dated 
May  28th,  1915,  for  Berlin,  two  piasters  and  twenty  paras  were 
charged  in  excess  by  error.  I  beg  you  to  withdraw  the  sum 
mentioned  at  the  cash  desk  of  our  bureau,  with  the  receipt  con- 
cerned so  that  it  may  be  rectified." 


MR.  LANSING  THOUGHT  IT  MORE  COURTEOUS       245 

But  then  the  Turk  has  ever  been  a  fairly  honest  individual. 

The  same  fine  regard  for  the  proprieties  was  exhibited  by  the  Bul- 
garians and  Germans,  and  in  Austria-Hungary  the  cost  of  suppressed 
telegrams  could  be  reclaimed  upon  application  in  writing.  In  all  three  of 
these  countries  the  senders  of  suppressed  telegrams  were  notified  of  what- 
ever action  the  censor  had  taken,  and  for  the  purpose  of  giving  the  foreign 
newspaper  correspondent  the  chance  to  appeal  to  a  higher  authority,  all 
press  dispatches  had  to  be  filed  in  triplicate,  one  of  which  was  used  by  the 
telegraph  operator,  the  other  was  kept  by  the  censor  and  the  third  was  re- 
turned to  the  correspondent,  who  was  thus  able  to  see  what  had  given 
oflfense,  if  elimination  had  been  practiced.  If  the  sender  was  not  satisfied 
with  the  work  of  the  censor  he  could  bring  the  case  to  the  attention  of  the 
press  department  of  the  foreign  office,  if  the  dispatch  was  of  a  political 
nature — to  the  press  department  of  the  general  staff,  if  it  was  of  a  military 
character.  Correspondents  in  those  countries  were  invited  to  make  deposits 
in  the  telegraph  bureau,  and  in  some  cases  the  tolls  were  charged  to  ac- 
count. In  this  manner  no  tolls  were  paid  on  suppressed  telegrams  or 
parts  of  telegrams. 

British  Censorship  Diplomacy  Ubiquitous 

The  British  and  French  censors  were  especially  concerned  with  keeping 
out  of  the  United  States  my  dispatches  from  Sofia  in  the  summer  of  1915, 
despite  the  fact  that  they  permitted  their  publication  in  their  own  news- 
papers, which  had  access  to  them  through  Holland  and  Switzerland.  Mr. 
Stone  made  some  more  desperate  attempts  to  get  the  matter  through  but 
failed  again.  Through  Mr.  Paxton  Hibbon,  Associated  Press  correspondent 
at  Athens,  Mr.  Stone  instructed  me  to  try  every  telegraph-cable  route  I 
could  reach.  For  a  time  I  filed  dispatches  in  triplicate  over  the  following 
connections : 

Sofia -Bucharest -Budapest -Berlin -The  Hague- London -"New  York; 
Sofia-Constanza-Odessa-Petrograd-Stockholm-Z,owc?ow-New  York,  and 
Sofia-Dedeagatch-Salonika-Athens-Marseilles-Pam-New  York.  Even  this 
effort  resulted  in  very  little  and  since  it  was  already  the  fashion  to  take 
neutral  mail  from  neutral  ships  on  the  high  seas  and  in  British  ports,  the 
outlook  was  the  poorest  possible. 

A  few  messages  via  Athens  went  through,  but  on  September  22nd, 
Mr.  Paxton  Hibbon  had  occasion  to  write  me: 

"Your  long  and  excellent  dispatch  about  Bulgarian  affairs 
was  held  here  by  the  censors  a  total  of  23  hours !  From  the  time 
it  reached  me  it  was  filed  within  25  minutes — but  the  delay  was 
the  fault  of  the  censor,  not  of  the  telegraph  company.    If  events 


246  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

keep  on  as  they  are  going,  I  think  of  going  up  to  Nish — in  which 
case  we  may  be  able  to  make  faces  at  one  another  from  opposite 
camps." 

A  carbon  copy  of  that  dispatch  shows  that  in  it  I  announced  that 
Bulgaria  would  before  long  bring  the  issue  of  Macedonia  to  a  climax,  and 
war  would  be  the  inevitable  result,  "according  to  a  reliable  source  of 
information."  The  reliable  source  was  Dr.  RadoslavoflF,  who,  for  reasons 
of  his  own  was  very  outspoken  about  that  time.  The  censor  referred 
to  was  not  British  in  this  instance,  but  a  Greek,  a  man,  as  I  learned  later, 
who  was  well  liked  by  the  Agence  Radio  of  Paris,  a  French  propaganda 
institution,  whose  manager  at  Athens,  was  later  invited  to  a  duel  by  Mr. 
Hibbon. 

Very  shortly  after  this  the  Athens  route  failed  us  completely.  It 
seems  that  Mr.  Hibbon,  who  was  French  enough  to  fight  duels,  could  not 
understand  why  the  correspondent  of  an  American  news  service  was  to 
be  looked  upon  as  an  adjunct  to  French  and  British  propaganda  in  Greece. 
About  that  time  he  was  received  about  once  a  week  by  King  Constantin 
of  Greece,  so  often  in  fact  that  a  French  paper  thought  it  proper  to  refer 
to  him  as  "the  American  secretary  of  a  pro-German  Greek  king,"  all  of 
which  did  not  improve  our  telegraphic  facilities.  After  a  while  I  stopped 
using  that  route. 

Mr.  Martin  was  again  in  London  now,  and  the  service  needed  news 
of  the  highly  critical  situation  in  the  Balkans.  He  sent  a  message  to  the 
Berlin  office  which  in  part  read  thus : 

"Long  articles  on  diplomatic  relations  unarrived  received 
today  your  two  service  dispatches  sixth  seventh  also  yours  of 
October  fifth  latter  not  forwarded  because  facts  already  published 
england." 

The  date  of  the  telegram  is  October  9th.  Its  burden  is  that  my  dis- 
patches from  a  country  on  the  verge  of  war  had  been  delayed  three,  two 
and  one  days,  and  when  finally  they  were  delivered  the  facts  of  one  had 
been  published  in  England,  though  not  in  the  same  dress.  I  had  similar 
service  messages  from  New  York,  but  will  not  weary  the  reader  with 
them. 

In  the  meantime  my  Berlin  dispatches  were  being  delayed  in  a  rather 
mysterious  manner.  On  October  8th  I  received  a  telegram  from  the 
Berlin  office  saying: 

"Nothing  received  from  you  since  your  October  first." 

It  was  evident  that  there  was  somebody  "sitting"  on  the  wire  along 
the  SofiaL-Bucharest-BudsLpest-Btrlm  route.  On  the  tenth  Mr.  Martin  was 
heard  from  again: 


BRITISH  CENSORSHIP  DIPLOMACY  UBIQUITOUS      247 

"Approve  schreiner  remaining  but  we  get  almost  none  his 
matter  by  cable  stop  advisable  employ  wireless  importanest." 

Allusion  to  my  possible  departure  from  Bulgaria  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  I  had  been  asked  to  go  to  Berlin,  because  the  chief  of  that  bureau  had 
taken  a  trip  to  the  United  States.  Since  Bulgaria  was  on  the  very  eve  of 
war,  I  decided  that  it  would  be  the  poorest  policy  to  leave  Sofia  then,  but 
was  not  able  to  get  that  information  to  the  management.  I  finally  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  access  to  a  diplomatic  mail  pouch  into  which  I  was  able 
to  smuggle  a  letter  to  Mr.  Stone.  It  is  dated  October  3rd,  and  contains 
among  other  information  the  now  doubly  interesting  remark : 

"In  view  of  the  fact  that  I  hope  to  get  this  letter  to  you 
through  the  diplomatic  mail.  ...  I  may  tell  you  that  Bulgaria 
will  be  obliged  to  take  part  in  the  European  War  before  long,  will 
have  done  so,  I  think,  by  the  time  this  letter  reaches  you." 

The  delay  and  suppression  of  my  dispatches  over  the  Rumanian  route 
had  caused  me  to  make  representations  first  to  the  Bulgarian  telegraph 
administration  and  censors.  The  records  of  the  operators  who  had 
handled  my  copy  showed,  however,  that  my  telegrams  had  been  promptly 
transmitted.  Tracing  the  dispatches  at  Budapest  showed  that  the  delay 
had  been  due  to  Rumanian  influence,  and  that  four  of  them  had  been 
there  suppressed. 

Since  the  situation  in  Bulgaria  did  not  aflFect  the  Rumanian  govern- 
ment, so  far  as  I  knew,  I  telegraphed  several  times  to  the  Rumanian 
telegraph  authorities,  but  received  no  reply.  It  was  bad  enough  to  be 
baffled  by  the  censors  of  the  countries  at  war.  What  Rumania  should  have 
to  gain  or  lose,  at  that  stage,  by  interfering  with  telegrams,  showing  on 
their  face  that  they  were  intended  for  publication  in  the  United  States, 
was  a  little  more  than  I  could  understand.  I  sent  to  Mr.  Charles  J.  Vopicka, 
the  United  States  minister  to  Rumania,  Bulgaria  and  Serbia,  at  Bucharest, 
the  following  dispatch: 

"Sofia  October  eleventh  fourthirty  pm  request  you  have  kind- 
ness interest  yourself  in  fate  my  telegraphic  messages  sent  from 
here  during  period  October  first  seventh  stop  sent  about  ten  none 
arrived  berlin  which  point  destination  stop  messages  addressed 
conger  associated  press  stop  inquiries  here  show  messages  duly 
forwarded  stop  asserted  here  bucharest  censorship  possibly  re- 
sponsible stop  kindly  inform  rumanian  authorities  my  messages  go 
only  america  and  that  it  not  always  well  lose  goodwill  our 
organization  stop  greetings  many  thanks — aux  censeurs  inutile 
supprimer  cette  depeche  parceque  copie  sera  remise  au  ministre  par 
voie  diplomatique." 

The  French  text  of  the  message  says  merely  to  the  censors;    It  will 


248  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

be  useless  to  suppress  this  dispatch  since  a  copy  of  it  will  be  remitted  to 
the  minister  through  diplomatic  channels. 

Censorship  Diplomacy  in  Bulgaria 

A  little  while  later  I  had  the  experience  of  being  notified  by  M. 
GeorgieflF,  the  efficient  chief  of  Bulgaria's  political  police,  or  secret  service, 
that  I  would  have  some  two  hours  before  leaving  Bulgaria  and  its  capital 
for  good  and  always.  War  had  in  this  instance,  as  elsewhere,  worked 
a  complete  metamorphosis.  There  was  now  a  censorship  that  did  not  have 
its  superior  anywhere.  (See  Appendix.)  Major-General  JekoflF,  the 
chief  of  staff,  had  put  together  a  set  of  press  regulations  that  permitted 
only  the  really  good  news  of  Bulgaria  and  her  war  with  Serbia  and  the 
Entente  to  go  out.  Moreover,  the  chief  censor,  and  the  general  manager 
of  the  Agence  Telegraphique  Bulgare,  and  director  of  the  Press  Bureau 
in  the  Foreign  Office  were  one  and  the  same  person,  a  Mr.  Joseph  Herbst, 
who  a  little  while  before  had  confided  to  me,  in  a  fit  of  trustfulness,  that 
if  he  had  his  way  about  it  he  would  hang  with  his  own  hands  every 
foreign  correspondent  in  the  country  as  soon  as  the  mobilization  had  been 
ordered.  Incidentally,  he  wished  to  make  this  little  massacre  completer 
still  by  hanging  the  military  attaches  at  the  same  time.  Cospodine  and 
Captain  Herbst,  being  a  pleasant  man  withal,  did  not  attend  to  my  execu- 
tion, possibly  because  I  was  the  one  lone  neutral  foreign  correspondent 
with  whom  he  had  to  deal.  But  we  had  our  clashes,  especially  after  I  had 
been  with  a  Bulgarian  division  in  Serbia,  and  later  in  Macedonia,  and 
had  run  into  things  that  did  not  entirely  please  me. 

The  consequence  was  that  one  fine  afternoon  I  was  cited  to  appear 
in  the  presence  of  Mr.  Georgieff,  who  saw  in  every  American,  about  that 
time,  another  Mr.  Einstein.  The  interview  was  terse.  A  police  secretary 
acted  as  interpreter,  and  the  political  police  chief  thought  that  he  was 
dealing  with  a  person  as  amenable  to  threats  as  the  poor  devils  whom  he 
used  to  beat,  until  the  blood  ran,  with  the  great  cowhide  whip,  model 
d  la  knut,  that  hung  behind  his  desk  on  the  wall.  M.  Georgieff  was 
rather  surprised  when  I  told  him  that  he  could  go  to  a  certain  warm 
place  and  that  I  did  not  think  of  leaving  Sofia  that  evening.  I  would 
have  to  be  out  of  the  city  and  country  on  the  following  day,  he  snorted. 
To  which  I  remarked  that  I  had  no  intention  doing  that  even.  The 
chief  then  mentioned  the  deepest  dungeon  he  had  at  his  disposal  and 
similar  tommyrot.  He  was  pummeling  the  desk  with  both  fists  as  I 
walked  from  the  room. 

In  times  of  war  the  secret  police  is  a  mighty  institution,  of  course. 
It  is  best  to  be  on  good  terms  with  it,  as  I  knew  only  too  well  by  that 


CENSORSHIP  DIPLOMACY  IN  BULGARIA  249 

time.  It  is  better  yet  to  watch  the  secret  police,  which  can  be  done  by 
the  averagely  wide-awake  newspaper  man,  especially  since  he  knows  most 
of  the  little  tricks  of  the  secret  service  himself,  and  in  consequence  does 
not  have  before  these  ferreting  minions  of  the  governments  at  war  that 
awe  and  fear  which  seems  to  strike  the  meek  citizen.  Knowing  that  M. 
Georgieff  had  taken  an  interest  in  me,  being  familiar  also  with  what  hap- 
pened to  the  foreign  newspaper  men  in  Sofia  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
Balkan  War,  I  had  given  certain  men  in  the  Foreign  Office  to  understand 
that  I  did  not  propose  being  railroaded  out  of  the  country  with  a  police 
escort,  should  the  moment  come  when  my  copy  might  have  to  give  offense. 
The  following  letter  will  throw  more  light  on  this : 

Sofia,  April   14th,   1916. 
Dimiter  Stancieff,  Esquire, 
Chief  Consular  Division, 
Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
Sofia,  Bulgaria. 

"Dear  Mr.  Stancieff: 

"During  the  past  few  days  it  has  come  to  my  ears  several 
times  that  I  am  being  looked  upon  as  a  suspect  by  your  secret 
police.  At  first  I  was  inclined  to  pay  no  attention  to  so  silly  a 
rumor.  Indeed,  I  am  not  yet  convinced  that  the  authorities  in 
question  have  been  rightly  reported  on  the  subject.  The  fact, 
however,  that  today  again  I  was  informed  that  I  am  being  looked 
upon  with  suspicion — this  time  by  a  person  whose  word  I  do 
not  care  to  doubt — compels  me  to  bring  the  matter  to  your 
attention. 

"I  do  not  for  a  moment  question  the  right  of  the  authorities 
concerned  to  keep  an  eye  on  strangers,  but  it  seems  to  me  that 
in  the  absence  of  all  justification  for  such  an  absurd  contention 
it  is  overstepping  the  bounds  of  propriety  to  label  unoffending 
visitors  to  Bulgaria  nolens  volens  suspects.  You  will  have  no 
difficulty  realizing,  I  am  sure,  that  a  reputation  of  that  sort  is 
injurious  not  only  to  my  work  and  standing  here,  but  also  in 
the  Central  Empires.  For  these  reasons  I  must  ask  you  to  take 
the  necessary  steps  for  the  cessation  of  such  slanderous  gossip 
on  the  part  of  certain  government  officials.  The  least  that  could 
be  done  under  the  circumstances  is  to  point  out  to  the  secret 
police  that  it  serves  no  purpose  whatsoever  to  treat  all  Americans 
as  Entente  agents,  or  to  listen  to  rumors  possibly  spread  by  the 
Entente  group  of  Americans  in  Sofia. 

"You  would  very  much  oblige  me  by  bringing  this  matter  to 
the  knowledge  of  competent  authorities,  for  which  purpose  I 
have  written  this  letter  when  I  could  have  discussed  the  matter 
with  you  personally.*' 

I  did  not  leave  Sofia  as  M.  Georgieff  intended,  but  instead  made  a 
trip  to  Macedonia,  leaving  meanwhile  somebody  in  the  capital  to  watch 


250  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  secret  police,  as  it  were.  This  person  discovered  that  the  chief  of 
the  secret  service,  in  addition  to  being  sympathetic  to  complaining  censors, 
had  listened  to  the  fears  and  opinions  of  two  German  cavalry  lieutenants, 
who  were  now  in  the  aviation  service  and  who  from  some  remarks  I  made 
at  a  dinner  table  had  concluded  that  I  was  at  least  in  the  service  of  the 
Entente  governments. 

Unfortunately,  the  exigencies  of  war  cause  some  men  and  nearly  all 
women  to  believe  that  their  cause  alone  is  good,  and  that  the  neutral 
must  either  have  no  opinions  of  his  own  or  must  be  hypocrite  enough  to 
set  his  mental  sails  to  every  passion  breeze  that  blows.  M.  Georgieff  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  expel  me,  and  in  this  he  had  also  the  support 
of  a  Major  Frederici,  then  in  charge  of  German  secret  service  in  Bul- 
garia and  at  one  time  connected  with  the  secret  police  of  Berlin.  Before 
both  gentlemen  changed  their  mind  I  had  been  obliged  to  enlist  the 
good  service  of  M.  Kozeff,  general  secretary  of  the  Sofia  Foreign  Office, 
and  Dr.  RadoslavoflF,  the  minister-president.  Such  is  the  power  of  the 
political  police  and  the  military  in  times  of  war. 

A  little  later,  a  member  of  the  opposition  of  the  government  in  the 
Sobranje  made  the  incident  the  subject  of  an  interpellation  of  the  ministry. 
The  man,  it  seems,  was  after  the  scalp  of  Captain  Herbst,  which  I 
enabled  the  latter  to  keep  on  by  stating  facts  in  the  case  which  had  not 
become  known. 

I  have  related  the  above  for  no  other  reason  than  to  show  that 
governments  at  war  have  no  room  for  the  impartial  newspaper  man.  It 
is  not  the  truth  that  is  wanted,  but  the  literary  compositions  that  make 
up  propaganda.  The  interests  of  the  neutral  are  not  regarded  at  all,  of 
course.  Every  line,  every  word  in  fact,  is  weighed  against  the  effect  it 
will  have  if  brought  to  the  attention  of  a  people  that  may  have  no  direct 
interests  at  stake  but  whose  sympathy  may  in  the  end  become  an  asset. 

Mr.  Gerard  Also  Promotes  Public  Opinion 

After  a  short  vacation  in  the  United  States  I  was  instructed  to  return 
to  my  post  in  Vienna,  from  which  point  I  was  covering  the  Balkans — as 
best  as  I  could.  My  territory  was  larger  than  that  of  all  other  American 
correspondents  in  the  Central  empires — in  Germany  I  should  say,  because 
few  of  them  ever  ventured  far  afield.  In  Vienna  I  was  the  only  American 
correspondent  and  had  in  the  course  of  time  succeeded  in  wearing  down 
the  great  distrust  toward  all  who,  by  virtue  of  origin  or  domicile,  were 
likely  to  have  leanings  toward  the  Allies, 

Since  the  chief  of  the  Berlin  Bureau  of  the  Associated  Press  needed 
also  a  vacation,  it  was  decided  that  I  should  stay  in  his  place  long  enough 
for  him  to  take  a  rest. 


MR.  GERARD  ALSO  PROMOTES  PUBLIC  OPINION      251 

I  was  familiar  enough  with  the  difficulty  of  getting  news  to  the  United 
States  and  was  not  at  all  surprised,  therefore,  when  I  learned  that  the 
American  correspondents  at  Berlin  had  petitioned  the  United  States  govern- 
ment to  come  to  their  rescue.  Two  things  had  to  be  considered  by  these  men. 
In  the  first  place  they  were  eager  to  get  their  copy  through,  after  running  to 
some  extent  the  risks  of  war  at  the  front,  and  paying  out  good  money 
for  it  in  telegraph  and  cable  tolls  as  far  as  London,  and,  secondly,  they 
had  to  think  of  themselves.  Editors  and  publishers  in  the  United  States 
had  begun  to  feel  that  nothing  was  gained  by  having  a  correspondent  at 
Berlin,  since  so  little  of  his  matter  ever  reached  them,  and  since  so  much 
of  it  arrived  in  mutilated  condition,  after  the  British  censors  had  cut  it 
here  and  there  so  that  often  the  dispatch  was  a  mere  jumble  of  words 
in  its  most  important  essentials.  The  result  was  that  little  by  little  cor- 
respondents were  lopped  off,  which  was  exactly  what  the  British  govern- 
ment wanted.  Their  number  had  never  been  great.  I  believe  that  thirty 
was  the  maximum  at  any  time  of  the  War.  Now  they  had  dwindled 
down  to  hardly  a  dozen. 

Such  being  the  case  it  was  decided  to  petition  the  United  States 
government  to  use  its  kind  efforts  in  London  for  the  purpose  of  assuring 
to  dispatches  originating  with  bona  fide  American  correspondents  at  Berlin 
unhindered  transit.  That  much  was  explained  to  me  by  a  member  of  the 
Associated  Press  staff  at  the  German  capital,  Mr.  Miles  S.  Bouton.  The 
man  also  stated  that  the  petition  had  been  sent  through  the  American 
embassy,  and  that  Mr.  James  W.  Gerard,  the  ambassador,  had  been  con- 
sulted in  connection  with  it.  Mr.  Gerard  had  said  that  he  could  not 
endorse  "this  effort  to  interfere  with  the  censorship  of  the  British."  The 
correspondents  had  hoped  that  he  would  do  this,  but,  knowing  the  man, 
were  not  surprised  when  he  refused.  They  asked  him,  however,  not  to 
interfere  with  the  petition  otherwise,  possibly  by  stating  to  the  United 
States  government  that  he  could  not  endorse  it. 

This  Mr.  Gerard  promised  to  do,  but  did  not  do.  The  correspondents 
knew  Mr.  Gerard  too  well,  and  decided,  therefore,  to  watch  his  hands. 
A  day  or  two  later  they  learned  that  Mr.  Gerard  had  forwarded  the 
petition,  but  had  accompanied  it  with  a  statement  to  the  effect  that  he  was 
not  in  sympathy  with  the  desires  of  the  American  correspondents. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  I  became  involved  in  the  affair. 

One  of  the  signers  of  the  petition  was  Mr.  Conger,  the  chief  of  the 
Berlin  Bureau  of  the  Associated  Press,  who  was  on  leave,  and  whose 
place  I  was  filling.  One  morning,  then,  a  committee  of  American  cor- 
respondents called  to  acquaint  me  with  what  had  occurred.  This  done  they 
suggested  that  in  view  of   the  fact  that   Mr.  Conger  was  one  of  the 


252  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

petitioners  I,  having  taken  his  place  for  the  time  being,  should  go  with 
them  to  see  Mr.  Gerard,  whom  they  accused  of  a  breach  of  faith. 

We  met  at  the  offices  of  the  Chicago  Daily  News,  where  presently 
the  other  petitioners  gathered.  An  appointment  had  been  made  with  the 
ambassador,  but  he  seemed  surprised  when  a  little  later  the  entire  group 
put  in  appearance,  the  members  of  which  were :  Ackerman,  United  Press ; 
Bennet,  Chicago  Tribune;  Brown,  New  York  Times;  Endress,  Inter- 
national News  Service;  Hale,  New  York  American;  Schiitte  and  Swing, 
Chicago  Daily  News,  von  Wiegand,  New  York  World,  and  myself. 

Mr.  Gerard  greeted  us  airily  enough. 

"Why,  you  look  like  a  crowd  of  undertakers,"  he  remarked,  as  we. 
following  his  invitation,  seated  ourselves  about  the  large  room.  There 
being  no  response  to  this  greeting,  Mr.  Gerard  seated  himself  at  his  desk 
in  the  corner,  and  began  to  look  from  one  of  his  callers  to  the  other. 

"Mr.  Ambassador!"  began  Mr.  Endress,  "before  we  go  into  the  mat- 
ter which  we  wish  to  discuss  with  you,  we  would  like  to  warn  you  that 
everything  you  say  may  be  used  by  us  for  publication." 

"Well,  what  is  it"  asked  Mr.  Gerard,  a  little  impatiently. 

For  a  while  Mr.  Endress  continued  to  have  the  word.  He  reminded 
the  ambassador  of  the  promise  that  had  been  made,  and  asserted  that  this 
promise  had  not  been  kept.  In  defense  of  himself  Mr.  Gerard  said  that 
he  had  made  no  such  promise,  and  that,  aside  from  all  that,  he  had  the 
right  to  give  his  opinion  of  anything  he  transmitted  to  the  government. 

"I  do  not  think  you  have  that  after  a  different  understanding  has 
been  reached,  Mr.  Ambassador!"  put  in  Mr.  Schiitte,  rather  tersely.  "It 
was  well  understood,  I  believe,  that  if  you  could  not  endorse  our  request, 
you  were  to  forward  the  petition  without  comment  of  your  own." 

Mr.  Gerard  said  that  there  had  been  no  such  agreement.  The  result 
of  this  was  that  several  men  began  to  be  heard  from.  My  colleagues  were 
remarkably  icy  about  it,  and  the  cooler  they  kept  the  more  the  ambassador 
lost  his  temper,  though  he  tried  hard  to  control  it. 

It  came  to  the  point  where  unpleasantries  were  passed  back  and  forth. 
Mr.  Swing,  the  only  man  in  the  group  whom  I  knew  at  all  well,  has  a 
biting  sarcasm  and  it  was  not  long  before  Mr.  Gerard  was  the  subject 
and  object  of  it.  To  some  remark  made  by  Mr.  Gerard  one  of  the  group 
said  that  he  need  not  think  that  he  was  afraid  of  any  ambassador,  adding 
sotto  voce,  even  if  that  ambassador  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  up  the 
passports  of  Americans  who  did  not  kowtow  to  him. 

I  gained  the  impression  that  Mr.  Gerard  was  of  the  opinion  that 
the  thing  had  been  staged  in  order  to  make  him  lose  his  temper.  That 
was  not  the  case,  however.  At  the  preliminary  meeting  held  in  the 
office  of  the  Chicago  Daily  News,  no  mention  of  that  was  made,  though 


MR.  GERARD  ALSO  PROMOTES  PUBLIC  OPINION      253 

most  of  the  correspondents  agreed  that  no  words  were  to  be  minced  with 
Mr.  Gerard.  I  can  attest  that  they  kept  their  word.  These  men  had 
been  goaded  so  long  by  the  British  censors  and  the  telegrams  of  their 
editors  demanding  copy  and  complaining  when  there  was  none,  after  they 
had  taken  a  turn  in  the  mud  of  the  trenches  or  were  routed  four  times 
a  day  by  Allied  aeroplane  attacks,  that  they  seemed  glad  to  have  found 
somebody  in  authority  upon  whom  they  could  pour  a  little  of  their  indigna- 
tion. 

Since  I  was  not  one  of  the  signers  of  the  petition  but  was  there  as 
proxy  I  did  not  deem  it  worth  while  to  meddle  much  with  the  affair.  I 
had  troubles  of  my  own  in  Vienna,  and  knew  the  policy  of  the  man  whose 
place  I  was  filling  merely  to  the  extent  of  having  learned  that  he  was 
one  of  the  petitioners,  number  one,  in  fact,  since  he  was  looked  upon  as 
the  dean  of  the  corps.  Mr.  Gerard,  moreover,  hardly  knew  me,  having  met 
me  once,  a  year  before. 

But  presently  I  was  to  be  drawn  into  the  affair  against  my  will.  The 
discussion,  still  very  heated,  had  turned  upon  the  attitude  of  the  American 
ambassador.  That  attitude  was  simple  enough,  it  seemed.  Indulging  in 
a  generalization  that  was  highly  unwarranted,  Mr.  Gerard  said  that  it  was 
far  from  being  the  concern  of  the  American  correspondents  in  Berlin  what 
the  British  censors  did  with  their  dispatches,  so  long  as  the  same  cor- 
respondents did  not  demand  that  their  matter  was  permitted  to  leave 
Germany  without  being  censored.  He  said  that  he  would  endorse  their 
petition  on  the  day  on  which  they  could  show  him  that  their  dispatches 
were  no  longer  subject  to  a  censorship  that  was  extremely  rigorous,  partial, 
unfair  and  calculated  to  make  every  newspaper  article  going  out  of  Ger- 
many a  piece  of  propaganda.  Before  expecting  the  American  government 
to  ask  for  non-interference  on  the  part  of  the  British  censors  with  their 
dispatches,  the  American  correspondents  would  do  better  to  demand  the 
same  treatment  of  the  German  government.  They  could  get  that  treatment, 
he  was  sure,  if  as  a  body  they  insisted  upon  getting  it. 

Several  efforts  were  made  to  point  out  to  the  ambassador  that  there 
was  a  great  difference  between  censorship  at  the  source  of  news  and 
censorship  in  transit.  Several  remarks  of  mine  in  that  direction  were  not 
well  received  by  Mr.  Gerard,  who  was  on  the  verge  of  telling  me  that 
he  did  not  know  me,  or  that  the  business  in  hand  was  no  affair  of  mine 
anyway.  To  save  the  ambassador  that  trouble  I  informed  him  that  I 
was  acting  for  Mr.  Conger,  and  that  I  felt  myself  entitled  to  my  opinions 
whether  he  thought  so  or  not. 

The  conversation,  if  I  may  call  it  that,  was  carried  on  in  high  voices, 
and  presently  one  of  the  group  suggested  that  it  might  not  be  a  bad 
idea  to  tone  down  a  little.     This  done  an  attempt  was  made  by  almost 


254  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

every  one  in  turn  to  show  that  while  the  American  correspondents  in 
Berlin  might  have  no  rights  in  the  premises,  it  was  possible,  nevertheless, 
that  the  press  of  the  United  States  and  the  American  public  had  some 
interests  here— interests  which,  perhaps,  were  not  recognized  in  Washing- 
ton, but  which  were  great  for  all  that.  It  was  the  right  of  the  American 
public  to  know  both  sides,  the  right  at  least  of  those  who  cared  to 
examine  the  issues,  as  Mr.  Bennet  put  it. 

Before  long  the  discussion  was  heated  again.  Mr.  Gerard  made  a 
faux  pas.  Rather  heatedly  he  charged  that  all  those  present  were  the 
agents  of  the  German  government,  and  even  went  as  far  as  to  suggest 
that  they  were  taking  money  from  unholy  hands. 

"I  presume,  you  do  not  include  me,  since  I  do  not  work  here,"  I 
remarked. 

The  correspondents  were  now  on  their  feet.  Some  of  them  started 
for  the  door. 

"I  regret  to  say,  Mr.  Ambassador!"  said  Mr.  Schiitte,  stopping  a 
moment  as  he  walked  past  Mr.  Gerard,  "that  we  must  use  this  story.  We 
expected  to  find  you  in  a  different  frame  of  mind." 

"Use  this — what  ?"  almost  shouted  Mr.  Gerard.  "You  will  do  nothing 
of  the  kind.     What  passed  here  is  confidential." 

"Would  have  been,  if  we  had  not  warned  you,"  said  Mr.  Endress. 
"You  did  nothing  of  the  sort,"  shouted  the  ambassador. 
"You  were  warned,"  said  the  chorus  and  filed  into  the  hall  and  then 
into  the  street. 

There  was  a  sort  of  indignation  meeting  on  the  next  corner,,  and  it 
was  not  until  then  that  I  learned  that  English  and  French  correspondents 
in  Washington  had  cabled  to  their  papers  a  story  to  the  effect  that  the 
petition  of  the  American  correspondents  was  not  likely  to  get  favorable 
consideration  by  their  government,  because  Ambassador  Gerard  had  ex- 
pressed himself  as  unable  to  support  the  move. 

When  the  group  dispersed  it  did  this  for  the  purpose  of  writing  of  the 
interview  and  two  hours  later  most  of  the  dispatches  were  on  the  wire  to 
Holland  and  on  the  wireless  from  Nauen.  There  was  also  a  sensation 
in  the  Foreign  Office,  and  a  little  later  the  German  government  was  con- 
sidering the  advisability  of  suggesting  to  the  government  of  the  United 
States  that  Mr.  Gerard  take  a  vacation. 

Through  the  Wolff  Bureau  the  affair  had  gotten  into  the  Berlin  after- 
noon papers,  most  of  whom  promised  their  public  editorials  on  the  subject 
later  on. 

Next  morning  those  editorials  were  there.  It  cannot  be  said  that 
the  American  ambassador  fared  too  well  in  any  of  them,  nor  did  some  of 
them  spare  the  American  correspondents.    Count  Reventlow,  for  instance, 


MR.  GERARD  ALSO  PROMOTES  PUBLIC  OPINION     255 

called  upon  the  government  to  cease  immediately  giving  the  American  cor- 
respondents the  great  privileges  they  seemed  to  enjoy,  though  I  have  never 
understood,  being  a  novice  in  Berlin,  what  those  privileges  consisted  of 
apart  from  first  call  on  all  interviews  with  the  leading  men  in  the  govern- 
ment and  army. 

All  that  day  the  Berlin  press  raged  with  might  and  main,  and  next 
morning  the  storm  grew  worse.  Over  night  there  had  arrived  from 
Switzerland  news  dispatches  taken  from  the  French  press,  which  had  it 
that  the  Berlin  correspondent  of  the  Associated  Press,  in  this  instance 
my  humble  self,  had  sent  a  wireless  to  New  York  in  which  he  charged  the 
American  correspondents  in  Berlin  with  being  the  paid  agents  of  the 
German  government.  I  had  done  nothing  of  the  sort.  To  be  sure  I  had 
stated  that  Mr.  Gerard  was  of  that  opinion,  but  the  men  on  the  Eiffel  Tower 
who  were  ever  on  the  alert  for  the  news  that  flitted  past  them  had  either 
made  a  mistake  or  some  French  bureau  of  public  ^'information"  had  pur- 
posely misquoted  my  dispatch. 

The  correspondents  were  not  minded  to  let  the  matter  rest  there. 
Another  appointment  was  made  with  Mr.  Gerard,  and  to  our  surprise  he 
consented  readily  enough  to  another  meeting. 

"It  is  a  fine  mess  you  have  fixed  up  there,"  was  Mr.  Gerard's  first 
remark,  when  we  had  accepted  his  invitation  to  be  seated.  "What  is  to 
be  done  about  it?  I  think  you  were  rash — what  have  I  ever  done  to 
you?  Is  that  all  the  thanks  I  get  for  what  I  have  done  for  the  gang? 
What's  the  matter?" 

It  was  explained  to  Mr.  Gerard  that  in  adding  his  own  comment  to 
the  petition  he  had  certainly  not  helped  the  cause  of  freedom  in  journalism 
so  far  as  the  British  and  French  censors  were  concerned. 

"One  would  think  that  you  were  here  representing  British  instead 
of  American  interests,"  said  one  of  the  men.  "That  is  what  is  the  matter, 
if  you  want  to  know."  * 

This  time  the  group  had  a  dissenter  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Ackerman, 
of  the  United  Press.  He  began  to  see  things  in  the  light  of  Mr.  Gerard's 
position,  and  planted  himself  on  top  of  a  little  table  that  stood  beside  the 
ambassador's  desk. 

To  the  reiterated  question  what  the  correspondents  wanted,  answer 
was  finally  made  to  the  effect  that  nothing  short  of  a  retraction — a 
complete  one — would  be  acceptable.  It  would  have  to  be  that  or  Mr. 
Gerard  would  soon  have  reason  to  regret  that  he  had  charged  the  body 
of  correspondents  in  Berlin  with  being  the  agents  of  the  German  govern- 
ment. Meanwhile,  the  ambassador  could  exclude  from  the  retraction 
all  those  whom  he  knew  were  in  the  service  of  the  German  government, 

*  Since  then  Mr.   Gerard   has  been   knighted   by   King   George  of   England. 


256  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

provided  he  was  willing  to  institute  such  proceedings  against  them  as  the 
offense  demanded. 

The  suggestion  of  Mr.  Ackerman,  that  an  understanding  be  reached 
on  a  different  and  more  amicable  basis,  was  ignored.  For  a  few  moments 
there  was  an  awkward  pause,  and  then  Mr.  Gerard  reached  for  a  thick 
pad  of  yellow  paper  and  began  to  write. 

The  retraction  of  which  Mr.  Bennet  still  has  the  original,  and  I  only 
the  notes  I  made  at  the  time,  said  that  there  seemed  to  have  been  a  mis- 
understanding at  the  recent  meeting  between  the  American  correspondents 
at  Berlin  and  Ambassador  Gerard.  The  latter  had  not  wished  to  express 
himself  in  the  sense  that  the  German  censorship  was  unduly  rigorous  and 
partial,  that  on  the  contrary  it  was  rather  liberal.  For  the  American 
correspondents  in  Berlin  he  could  say  that  they  were  men  who  had  always 
lived  up  to  the  best  traditions  of  their  profession. 

Mr.  Gerard  handed  the  sheets  to  me  and  I  read  them  to  the  group. 
Several  of  the  men  did  not  want  to  accept  the  retraction  in  that  form, 
seeing  that  there  had  been  no  misunderstanding  in  word  and  sense,  but 
when  it  was  pointed  out  that  the  statement  could  not  very  well  be  given 
another  form,  considering  the  dignity  of  the  post  of  ambassador,  an 
agreement  was  reached  to  publish  the  statement  in  that  form. 

I  am  sure  that  American  correspondents  at  London,  of  the  same  mettle 
as  the  men  in  Berlin,  could  have  done  their  public  a  great  service.  The 
American  newspaper  men  in  Berlin  could  have  broken  down  the  censor- 
ship of  the  German  government  overnight,  at  least  so  far  as  their  work 
was  concerned.  That  they  did  not  do  this  was  entirely  a  question  of 
British  censorship.  None  of  the  men  felt  that  they  could  proceed  along 
these  lines  if  their  dispatches  and  articles  were  to  be  subject  to  the 
British  censorship  in  transmission  as  absolutely  as  they  were.  Two 
"strikes"  were  won  by  the  Americans,  though  they  were  only  partial,  because 
the  news  service  men,  those  of  the  Associated  Press,  for  instance,  did  not 
feel  that  they  could  embark  upon  such  an  enterprise.  But  there  was  a 
way  of  getting  them  into  line,  since  the  German  government  cared  more 
for  the  "specials"  than  for  the  news  service  writers,  whose  reports  were 
extremely  perfunctory  and  "dry"  as  Mr.  Stone  had  put  it. 

More  could  be  said  on  this  subject,  but  since  it  would  no  longer 
greatly  interest  the  public  it  may  as  well  remain  unsaid. 

What  the  Wilhelmstrasse  Thought  of  It 

On  the  day  of  the  retraction  I  was  called  up  from  the  Foreign  Office 
by  a  man  whose  name  is  known  to  every  American. 

I  found  the  functionary  in  a  rather  perturbed  frame  of  mind.     He 


WHAT  THE  WILHE'LMSTRASSE  THOUGHT  OF  IT      257 

had  asked  me  to  see  him  on  a  rather  important  matter  that  might  develop 
into  a  sensational  dispatch,  which  was  to  be  given  to  the  Associated  Press. 
As  yet  the  question  had  not  been  entirely  decided.  What  did  I  think  would 
be  the  effect  on  the  American  public  in  case  Mr.  Gerard  was  sent  home? 

Having  known  that  the  German  government  had  on  several  occasions 
occupied  itself  with  that  sort  of  thing  I  was  much  less  surprised  than 
may  have  been  expected.  I  replied  that  though  I  had  only  recently  been 
in  the  United  States,  I  was  not  in  a  position  to  say  what  the  effect  upon 
the  American  public  and  government  of  that  course  would  be.  There 
was  no  reason  to  take  the  utterances  of  Mr.  Gerard  too  tragically.  To 
some  extent  he  had  been  carried  away  by  his  temper  and  ego,  and  so  far 
as  I  was  able  to  judge  the  situation  nothing  could  be  gained  by  a  step 
that  might  lead  to  a  rupture  of  relations  between  the  United  States  and 
Germany,  and  probably  war. 

In  the  course  of  the  interview  I  gathered  that  the  personage  was 
badly  informed  concerning  the  general  state  of  affairs  in  the  United  States. 
He  seemed  to  be  under  the  impression  that  despite  all  efforts  made  to 
gain  the  sympathy  of  the  American  public  nothing  had  been  accomplished. 
I  corrected  that  opinion  to  the  extent  of  saying  that  failure  might  be  due 
to  these  efforts,  seeing  that  they  were  of  the  poorest  quality  and  could 
not  begin  to  measure  themselves  with  those  of  the  Allied  governments, 
who  had  started  with  everything  in  their  favor:  The  inherent  racial 
factors;  the  same  language,  a  literature  and  press  that  was  almost  held 
in  common,  similarity  in  institutions  and  to  some  extent  in  ideals — so  far 
as  the  British  propaganda  in  the  United  States  was  concerned;  Belgium 
and  the  Lusitania,  and  absolute  control  of  the  world's  news  channels  by 
Great  Britain  so  far  as  the  endeavor  of  the  Allies  generally  went. 

In  view  of  these  odds  nothing  but  a  withdrawal  from  the  field  of 
propaganda  could  be  advised.  It  would  be  best  to  keep  the  padlock  on 
the  lips  and  hands  of  every  German  propagandist  in  the  United  States,  and 
instruct  Count  Bernstorff  to  limit  his  own  activity  to  reading  the  German 
official  communiques  twice  a  day  and  tell  callers  that  he  had  nothing  to 
say.  Any  of  these  things  would  be  better  than  having  Mr.  Gerard  re- 
called. If  all  of  them  were  carried  through  they  might  even  keep  the 
United  States  out  of  the  War,  by  bringing  it  forcibly  to  the  attention  of  the 
American  public  that  it  was  really  hearing  but  one  side  of  the  bloody 
affair.  I  pointed  out  the  tactical  advantages  of  an  orderly  retreat  in  this 
field,  and  finally  left  with  the  remark  that  into  this  scheme  Mr.  Gerard 
would  fit  better  than  any  other  man. 

Before  I  left  for  my  post  in  Vienna  I  ascertained  that  my  suggestions 
had  fallen  on  barren  soil  with  the  men  "higher  up."  It  was  decided, 
however,   not  to   disturb   Mr.   Gerard,   of    whose   quality   of   service   as 


258  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

ambassador  to  Germany  his  book,  "My  Four  Years  in  Germany,"  is 
probably  the  best  index. 

I  have  throughout  this  chapter  dealt  with  experiences  of  a  personal 
sort  for  the  purpose  of  illustrating  in  that  manner  what  the  control  of 
the  news  channels  by  the  British  government  was  and  what  effect  it  had. 
I  hasten  to  say,  however,  that  my  American  colleagues  in  the  Central 
Empires,  notably  those  at  Berlin,  would  be  able  to  present  a  mass  of  evi- 
dence of  the  same  character.  For  two  years  and  a  half  these  men  struggled 
with  a  censorship  in  transit  that  was  ruthless  in  the  extreme,  which,  in  fact, 
was  not  only  applied  to  keep  the  American  public  in  the  mental  strait- 
jacket  of  Allied  propaganda,  but  which,  in  addition,  was  to  make  this 
all  the  easier  by  discouraging  the  maintenance  of  American  newspaper 
correspondents  in  Central  Europe  and  the  adjoining  neutral  states. 

Great  Britain  and  France  had  made  up  their  minds  that  the  American 
public  was  to  learn  only  that  which  promoted  their  interests  in  the  United 
States,  and  since  the  two  governments  sat  at  the  cableheads  they  had 
no  difficulty  doing  that.  To  the  credit  of  American  publishers  it  must  be 
recorded  that  they  bore  cheerfully  the  great  costs  which  brought  them  so 
little,  and  that,  considering  the  public  sentiment  they  dealt  with,  it  could 
only  be  the  appreciation  of  sound  journalism  which  was  their  motive  for 
procuring  at  so  great  an  expense  so  small  a  volume  of  news. 

To  the  credit  of  the  American  correspondents  in  Berlin  it  must  be 
recorded  that  to  the  very  last  they  observed  that  equanimity  of  mind  which 
is  the  chief  pre-requisite  of  the  man  who  would  write  "war"  copy.  I 
know  that  some  of  these  men  were  charged  with  being  pro-German.  I 
also  know  that  in  Berlin  they  were  charged  with  being  pro-British.  But 
that  is  bound  to  be  the  lot  of  the  individual  inclined  to  state  a  case  with 
malice  toward  none.  The  fine  and  impartial  work  of  the  American  cor- 
respondents in  Germany,  during  the  Great  War,  will  always  be  a  worthy 
monument  to  the  best  there  is  in  journalism. 

It  seems  futile  to  moralize  on  the  attitude  of  Great  Britain  and  her 
allies  in  regard  to  the  press  rights  of  others.  I  have  failed  miserably  in 
this  effort  if  I  have  not  made  clear  the  danger  there  is  for  a  public  and 
state  in  having  to  subsist  on  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  the  table  of  the 
rich  man  who  controls  the  news  avenues  of  the  world.  That  control 
enables  him  to  mould  the  public  opinion  of  the  world  into  any  shape 
he  desires.  Of  diplomacy  that  control  is  the  most  noxious  form,  of 
morality  it  is  the  ethics  of  the  robber  baron  of  old— the  mercy  of  the 
highwayman. 

On  this  occasion,  indeed,  the  public  of  the  United  States  fared  well 
in  the  course  of  action  it  came  to  accept  ultimately.  But  it  may  not  be 
always  that  so  pleasant  a  termination  of   war  comes   from  embarking 


WHAT  THE  WILHELMSTRASSE  THOUGHT  OF  IT      259 

wildly  upon  a  huge  military  adventure,  as  promoted  by  the  control  of  the 
world's  news  channels  by  a  nation  not  forever  committed  to  be  the  friend 
of  the  United  States. 

It  is  not  inconceivable  that  some  day  the  American  public  may  find 
itself  in  the  position  of  the  German  public  in  1917 — not  through  any 
fault  of  its  own,  but  because  of  the  political  ineptness  of  the  men  in  the 
government,  or  through  external  conditions  over  which  it  has  no  control. 
In  that  case  the  people  of  the  United  States  would  be  as  anxious  to 
present  their  case  to  the  world  as  were  the  Germans.  They  would  want 
to  have  their  case  understood  by  a  public  in  order  that  the  diplomacy  of 
its  government  might  be  counteracted  if  that  should  seem  necessary. 

A  free  news  channel  would  be  the  first  requirement  in  this.  How 
to  get  that  should  interest  the  several  nations  and  their  governments  much 
more  than  is  now  the  case.  By  bringing  but  one  side  of  a  case  in  court 
justice  becomes  a  travesty?  Moreover,  the  universal  freedom  of  the  cables 
and  other  means  of  electric  transmission  would  greatly  discourage  the 
international  bully. 

To  secure  that  freedom  looks  very  difficult,  I  know.  But  it  is 
hardly  that.  Nor  is  it  necessary  at  all  to  touch  the  sovereignty  and  ter- 
ritory of  nations  in  order  to  bring  it  about.  The  remedy  is  the  simplest 
and  will  not  in  any  way  interfere  with  the  rights  of  sovereign  states. 
It  consists  of  a  law  that  will  put  an  absolute  prohibition  on  the  publication 
of  news,  be  it  military  or  political,  from  a  country  the  government  of 
which  may  have  applied  censorship  in  any  form,  be  it  supervision  of  the 
news  as  written  or  interference  with  the  telo-electric  and  postal  means  of 
communication  at  the  point  of  origin  or  in  transit. 

The  moral  elements  involved  are  obvious  enough.  Governments  at 
war  exercise  their  ruthlessness  in  censorship  and  associated  endeavor  in 
what  is  known  as  "public  interest,"  which,  however,  may  be  nothing  more, 
fundamentally  examined,  than  the  ambition  of  the  ruling  caste.  The 
purpose  of  censorship  is  to  mislead  the  public  of  the  neutral  world,  and, 
if  possible,  to  enlist  sympathy  and  aid  in  quarters  where  none  might  be 
found  without  this  exercise  of  absolutism.  That  means,  of  course,  that 
only  favorable  news  and  comment  are  allowed  to  pass  on,  while  the  treat- 
ment of  one's  own  faults  is  not  permitted. 

The  censorship  of  any  country  at  war  is  never  confined  to  purely 
"military"  matters.  Feeding  the  mind  of  the  world  on  one-sided  accounts 
of  the  events  on  the  battlefield  leads  to  doing  the  same  in  every  other 
department.  Uniformly,  it  is  the  intention  of  censors  to  fool  others,  and 
during  the  Great  War  they  succeeded  as  never  before. 

But  against  that  sort  of  imposition  and  insult,  the  nations  not  at 
war  have  a  right  to  defend  themselves.    They  can  best  do  that  by  letting 


260  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

it  be  known  that  censorship  in  any  form,  be  it  at  the  point  of  origin,  or 
in  transit,  will  lead  instanter  to  the  exclusion  of  all  news  from  the 
offending  country.  The  resulting  one-sidedness  of  information  would  not 
obtain  long,  for  there  is  no  nation,  however  powerful,  that  would  risk 
being  thus  damned  in  the  eyes  of  the  public,  as  the  case  of  the  Central 
Powers  during  the  Great  War  so  well  demonstrated,  though  in  their  case 
it  was  control  of  the  news  channels  by  the  British  and  French  that  brought 
about  this  result,  and  for  that  reason  it  was  not  directly  of  their  seeking. 

Such  a  state  of  affairs  would  make  statesmen  and  diplomatists  a 
little  more  careful  than  they  have  been  recently.  And  the  example  of 
Germany  and  her  allies  would  aid  them  in  improving  themselves.  It  was 
not  force  of  arms  which  finally  overcame  that  most  marvelous  human 
institution  of  all  time — the  German  army — ^but  world  public  opinion,  the 
realization  by  the  German  people  and  their  associates  that  they  had  not 
a  friend  in  this  world.  It  was  this  thought  that  led  to  introspection  and 
the  breaking-up  of  that  marvelous  morale,  which  endured  the  agonies  of 
the  damned  for  four  years,  which  was  the  antidote  for  the  great  losses 
on  the  battlefields  and  famine  and  general  deterioration  at  home. 

The  victory  of  the  Associated  Governments  over  the  German  army 
and  people  was  not  a  military  one  in  any  sense  of  the  word.  No  dishonor 
can  attach  to  the  outcome  of  a  struggle  conducted  against  such  odds 
as  the  Central  Powers  group  of  belligerents  faced  successfully  to  the 
very  last.  The  credit  belongs  to  starvation  and  to  world  public  opinion  as 
this  was  shaped  by  the  British  and  French  censorships. 

To  the  American  public  that  can  not  seem  very  flattering,  but  the 
facts  in  the  case  permit  of  no  other  judgment.  Nor  has  it  yet  been 
established  that  the  ultimate  result  of  this  censor-promoted  regulation  of 
world  affairs  is  to  be  beneficial  in  the  main.  We  can  at  best  but  hope  that 
it  will  be  this. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  behooves  the  people  of  the  United  States 
to  see  to  it  that  it  may  not  have  itself  to  face  in  the  future  a  situation 
in  which  a  thoroughly  corrupt  diplomacy  may  by  the  control  of  the 
world's  news  channels  be  clothed  in  the  robes  of  a  saint,  with  haloes  for 
every  Neo-Idealist  and  Megalo-Idealist  who  choses  to  wear  one.  True 
democracy  has  for  its  foundation  strict  adherence  to  the  laws  of  nature 
as  they  manifest  themselves  in  the  relations  of  the  one  to  the  many — the 
social  unit  to  the  state.  In  that  scheme  it  can  not  be  tolerated  that 
individuals  stricken  with  megalomania  foist  off,  upon  the  public,  their 
notions  and  substitute  them  for  what  would  have  been  public  opinion — 
might  have  been  public  opinion  were  it  based  upon  the  unlimited  sifting 
of  the  evidence. 

That  applies  to  the  Great  War,  of  course — in  this  instance.     In  the 


WHAT  THE  WILHELMSTRASSE  THOUGHT  OF  IT      261 

next  it  may  apply  to  a  war  in  which  the  United  States  may  be  the 
object  of  a  general  attack.  The  world  has  always  had  its  bete  noire — 
black  sheep.  It  will  be  a  better  world  when  it  makes  up  its  mind  to 
see  for  itself  whether  the  black  sheep  is  really  as  bad  as  others  say  it  is. 

Sometimes  correction  is  carried  too  far,  a  fact  which  is  recognized 
by  the  legislator,  who  provides  both  a  maximum  and  a  minimum  punish- 
ment for  an  offense  before  the  law.  And  diplomacy  is  the  least  desirable 
of  prosecutors,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  the  accomplice  of  those  who  would 
sit  in  judgment.  When  the  judge — public  opinion — also  passes  under 
the  influence  of  the  prosecution,  the  case  of  the  accused,  even  if  he  be 
a  hardened  criminal  of  the  Prussian  militarist  type,  is  not  likely  to  lead 
to  a  judgment  to  which  posterity  will  point  with  pride. 

To  the  American  public  which  has  been  flattered  into  believing  that  it 
entered  the  Great  War  for  purely  moral  considerations,  these  things  should 
have  several  meanings.  In  the  first  place  the  liberation  of  the  news 
channels  is  something  that  should  be  undertaken  in  behalf  of  national 
security,  and,  secondly,  the  welfare  of  all  other  nations,  that  of  the  despots 
at  the  cableheads  included,  demands  that  this  be  done,  in  order  that 
diplomacy  may  in  the  future  have  to  recognize  at  least  one  master — 
strongest  of  them  all: 

World  public  opinion. 


XIII 

THE  BERUN  VIEWPOINT 

THE  War  was  to  be  a  swift  and  crushing  affair.  It  was  to  be 
terrible.  To  that  the  German  government,  and  its  sanctum  sanc- 
torum of  the  general  staff  was  absolutely  committed.  Mobilization 
was  to  be  carried  out  with  the  greatest  speed,  and  was  to  be  followed 
immediately  by  impetuous  attack  in  order  that  every  initial  advantage  might 
fall  into  the  hands  of  the  German  army.  In  pursuance  of  that  policy, 
Belgium  was  to  be  used  in  the  "Aufmarsch,"  or  first  advance  to  the 
attack,  as  it  was  used,  though  with  unexpected  military  results.  The 
Belgian  forts  and  the  army  put  up  a  resistance  that  discounted  entirely 
the  military  advantage  gained  by  being  able  to  press  the  French  army  from 
the  Northeast.  Since  the  fortifications  and  the  army  of  Belgium  existed 
long  before  the  outbreak  of  the  War,  it  was  shown  that  the  military  experts 
in  Berlin  were  not  as  wise  as  they  thought,  though  against  this  seeming 
miscalculation  must  be  charged  the  possibility,  which  was  deemed  great, 
of  the  Belgian  government  permitting  the  invasion  of  its  territory  by  the 
Germans  after  the  making  of  a  protest. 

It  was  held  in  Berlin  that  the  War  would  be  short.  Those  who  looked 
with  anxiety  at  the  "neck  of  the  bottle"  through  which  Germany  would 
have  to  gain  access  to  the  high  seas  and  foreign  markets  during  war  saw 
indeed  a  sinister  power  in  a  most  advantageous  position,  but  were  told 
and  assured,  as  they  were  to  the  last  by  Prince  Lichnowski,  that  Great 
Britain  would  not  come  to  the  assistance  of  the  Dual  Alliance.  Should 
that  become  the  case,  however,  the  war  would  still  be  short  enough  to 
make  the  British  blockade  ineffective.  Indeed,  there  were  those  who 
hoped  that  the  young  German  navy  would  be  able  to  put  a  bad  crimp  into 
its  great  antagonist,  the  fleet  of  the  British.  As  I  have  said  before,  the 
German  government  and  people  had  given  their  youthful  naval  establish- 
ment the  value  of  an  adult,  which  it  had  as  yet  only  on  paper  and  in 
the  imagination  of  the  German  chauvinists. 

But  there  was  ample  evidence  to  shake  the  idee  Hxe  of  the  German 
general  staff.  When  a  mere  has-been  soldier  of  my  class  was  able  to 
see  that  the  wars  of  the  future  would  not  be  necessarily  shorter  than  those 
of  the  past,  the  great  experts  in  Berlin  might  have  done  the  same,  had 
their  minds  been  bent  toward  peace  a  little  more.    I  hope  it  will  not  be 

262 


THE  BERLIN  VIEWPOINT  263 

thought  presumptuous  when  I  reproduce  here,  in  part,  an  editorial  I  wrote 

in  1912. 

"The  Italians  hold  but  a  small  part  of  Tripoli  and  seem 
loath  to  attempt  aggression  at  points  where  the  Turkish  army 
would  not  be  hampered  by  considerations  of  base.  Italy  today 
is  no  nearer  her  objective  than  she  was  when  her  fleet  attacked 
the  city  of  Tripoli.  The  whole  affair  is  a  bad  draw;  a  waiting 
game  which  in  the  end  will  be  decided  not  on  the  battlefield  but 
on  the  bourses  of  Europe. 

"The  pet  theory  of  the  modern  military  expert  has  thus  come 
to  grief.  When  the  Franco-Prussian  War  ended  the  conclusion 
was  reached  that  the  wars  which  would  follow  this  lightning 
campaign  would  be  as  short  and  even  shorter.  It  was  claimed 
that  hostilities  between  modern  armies  would  last  as  many  days 
as  formerly  they  had  lasted  months.  There  would  be  a  tremendous 
impact,  accompanied  by  a  fearful  loss  of  life  and  on  the  morrow 
negotiations  for  peace  would  be  inaugurated.  For  many  years 
nothing  occurred  which  seriously  assailed  this  theory.  The  few 
minor  affairs  in  Europe,  two  of  them  involving  Turkey  as  a 
belligerent,  were  short  and  decisive,  and  the  improvements  made 
in  artillery  and  small  arms  tended  to  aflfirm  the  conclusions  based 
upon  them.  However,  the  late  Boer  War  upset  calculations  con- 
siderably, and  so,  of  course,  did  the  Russo-Japanese  War.  Neither 
of  them  was  ended  by  virtue  of  greater  efficacy  of  modern  arma- 
ment. The  Boer  War  held  on  for  over  two  years  and  came  to  a 
close  because  one  of  the  belligerents  had  been  exhausted  by  de- 
privation, and  the  Russo-Japanese  campaign  came  to  an  end  be- 
cause both  sides  found  it  difficult  to  raise  further  loans  for  the 
pursuit  of  hostilities.  That  the  Turco-Italian  fracas  will  end  as 
ingloriously  can  no  longer  be  doubted. 

"Why  better  artillery,  magazine  rifles  and  machine  guns 
should  not  have  the  tendency  to  shorten  the  duration  of  wars  is 
easily  explained,  indeed  any  modern  book  on  tactics  will  make 
this  clear.  As  the  efficiency  of  the  arm  is  increased  the  movements 
of  the  force  against  which  it  is  to  be  directed  are  modified. 
The  greater  range  and  quicker  fire  of  the  modern  magazine  rifle 
has  merely  resulted  in  tactical  changes  calculated  to  counteract 
both,  and  since  this  is  a  game  at  which  two  can  play  it  would 
be  ridiculous  to  assert  that  from  this  quarter  the  shortening  of 
wars  is  to  be  expected. 

"We  have  but  to  consider  the  percentage  of  casualties  of 
the  modern  battlefield  to  convince  ourselves  that  from  a  strictly 
military  point  of  view  nothing  has  transpired  which  would  justify 
the  belief  that  wars  today  must  be  shorter  than  they  were 
formerly?  The  frightful  appetite  of  modern  armament  for  loans 
is  probably  the  only  influence  it  has  to  hasten  peace.  That  it 
cannot  do  this  even  in  all  cases  is  a  lesson  which  Turk  and 
Italian  are  now  being  taught." 

Since  this  is  precisely  the  negative  of  what  the  German  general  staff 


264  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

believed,  further  discussion  of  the  fallacy  which  induced  Emperor  Wil- 
liam to  think  or  believe  that  his  mobilization  could  not  be  stopped  or  the 
direction  of  the  started  armies  changed,  seems  unnecessary. 

Of  course,  the  German  government  did  not  take  into  proper  account 
the  attitude  of  Italy  as  a  member  of  the  Triple  Alliance.  That  Italy  was 
decidedly  lukewarm  toward  her  allies  was  known,  of  course,  but  too 
much  attention  was  yet  paid  to  the  utterance  of  Signor  Crispi,  Italian 
premier  at  the  time  when  the  Triple  Alliance  was  made.  That  able  states- 
man then  said: 

"Weakened  in  the  East,  with  the  freedom  of  the  seas  subject 

to  detrimental  circumscription,  restless  internally,  without  friends, 

and  without  sufficient  armament,  Italy  is  compelled  to  care  for 

its  safety." 

Diplomacy  of  the  Palazzo  Famese 

Italy  did  that  for  the  next  thirty  years  under  the  aegis  of  the  Triple 
Alliance.  But  times  will  change,  and  other  days  will  give  to  the  best 
of  treaties  a  meaning  they  did  not  have  when  entered  into.  In  M.  Barrere 
the  French  had  an  ambassador  at  Rome  who  was  just  the  man  to  wear 
down  the  antipathies  that  were  held  in  common  by  the  two  peoples.  Italy 
was  the  only  weak  spot  where  the  Triple  Alliance  could  be  attacked  as 
an  agreement  between  the  signatories,  and  Barrere  was  the  man  to  do  it. 
For  years  and  years  the  occupant  of  the  Palazzo  Farnese  labored  away, 
often  in  the  face  of  great  obstacles,  very  often  in  the  fetters  of  indiscret 
conduct  on  the  part  of  men  at  home  who  did  not  fully  know  the  plans 
of  the  government.  Admiral  Bienaime,  for  instance,  who  on  one  occasion 
was  sure  that  he  could  sink  the  Italian  navy  in  exactly  40  minutes. 

For  a  while  it  seemed  that  the  old  hatred  of  the  Italian  for  Austria- 
Hungary  would  be  superceded  by  something  better.  In  Vienna  they 
hoped  that  Italia  irredenta  would  be  forgotten,  and  such  seemed  to  be 
the  case  when  in  1893,  a  Roman  mob  stormed  the  French  embassy  and 
then  marched  to  the  Austro-Hungarian  embassy  and  cheered  the  ambassa- 
dor and  his  government  wildly.  Too  much  attention  was  paid  to  these  things 
by  men  in  Berlin  and  Vienna,  who  in  them  saw  hopes  realized — hopes 
they  were  pleased  to  identify  as  actuality.  There  were  cautious  men  who 
felt  that  the  antics  of  a  mob  must  not  be  taken  for  anything,  and  that 
international  affairs  must  move  on  the  plane  from  which  they  spring — 
tradition  and  community  of  interest.  A  mob  which  today  could  storm 
the  Palazzo  Farnese  might  tomorrow  storm  the  Palazzo  Cafarelli,  as 
it  did  some  twenty  years  later  while  under  the  influence  of  the  silver- 
tongued  and  hare-brained  Pan-Latin  buffoon  d'Annunzio. 

M.  Barrere,  mindful  of  the  fact  that  nations  are  biological  phenomena. 


DIPLOMACY  OF  THE  PALAZZO  FARNESE  265 

labored  on  patiently  and  was  later  joined  by  the  efficient  Rennel  Rodd, 
the  British  ambassador  at  Rome.  He  knew  that  while  Italians  had  not 
forgotten  the  occupancy  of  their  country  by  the  French  and  the  tender 
mercies  of  the  Zuaves,  his  cause  had  the  advantage  of  having  to  answer 
to  no  irredenta  arguments.  He  had  no  objection  to  seeing  the  Adriatic 
Sea  a  mare  clausum  in  the  control  of  the  Italians.  The  interests  of  his 
country  were  on  the  wide  Mediterranean  and  in  the  further  Levant,  while 
those  of  Austria-Hungary  were  primarily  in  the  Adria.  To  the  French 
it  could  not  matter  much  in  the  end  who  held  the  Epirus ;  to  the  Austrians 
it  meant  a  great  deal,  so  long  as  the  "corridor  to  Salonika"  occupied  the 
minds  of  men  of  the  Count  Aehrenthal  type. 

Thus  it  happened  that  the  Italian  government  disagreed  with  the 
contention  of  Vienna  and  Berlin,  that  the  War  between  the  Triple  Entente 
and  the  Central  Powers  was  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  war  of  defense  in 
the  case  of  the  latter.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  general  aspect  of  its 
inauguration  substantiated  that  assertion.  Serbia  could  not  attack  Austria- 
Hungary  and  thus  make  operative  the  terms  of  the  Triple  Alliance  Treaty 
and  did  not  do  that,  of  course. 

But,  as  the  Austro-Hungarians  could  well  claim,  Serbia  had  the 
assurance  of  Sazonoff  that  Russia  would  come  to  her  assistance,  in  case 
Serbian  stiff-neckedness  were  followed  by  a  declaration  of  war.  And  so 
far  as  Serbia  was  concerned  the  Italian  government  would  not  have  lifted 
a  little  finger.  Jugo-Slavism  along  the  Adriatic  was  already  a  fact,  and 
in  Rome  it  was  felt  that  this  megali  eedea  would  some  day  seriously 
interfere  with  the  Italian  plans  along  the  Adria — mare  nostra. 

Indeed,  for  the  time  being  it  was  a  case  of  either  seeing  the  South- 
slavs  supreme  in  the  Balkans,  or  the  Austro-Hungarians.  Since  neither 
was  loved  too  well  it  really  made  no  difference  how  the  terms  of  the 
Triple  Alliance  were  interpreted.  But  Italy  has  a  good  many  open  cities 
along  her  very  extensive  coast  line.  To  join  the  Central  Powers  in  the 
War  meant  that  these  would  be  open  to  attack  on  the  part  of  a  fleet,  the 
British  and  French,  which  would  at  the  same  time  keep  bottled  up  the 
German  fleet  in  the  North  Sea  and  Baltic  and  the  Austrian  and  Italian 
in  the  Adriatic.  That  possibility  was  not  to  be  invited  except  in  extremis, 
and  that  was  not  yet.  In  Berlin  and  Vienna  that  was  well  understood  and 
sympathetically  considered. 

The  French  government  had  been  obliged  to  throw  a  fairly  large 
army  against  the  Italian  border  when  the  War  came.  Italy's  attitude  was 
at  least  one  frought  with  uncertainties.  Germanophile  and  Austrophobe 
held  each  his  camp  and  the  government  had  to  enter  upon  a  strict 
neutrality.  But  something  happened  shortly  afterward.  The  advance  of  the 
Germans  through  Belgium  and  their  great   successes  in  August,   1914, 


266  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

as  the  result  of  which  much  French  territory  was  occupied,  and  the  French 
government  obliged  to  prefer  Bordeaux  to  Paris  as  a  temporary  capital, 
necessitated  the  transfer  of  the  French  troops  along  the  Italian  frontier 
to  the  north,  and  in  a  little  while  Marshal  Joffre  was  able  to  bring  with 
their  aid  to  a  standstill  the  advance  of  the  Germans,  after  a  series  of 
maneuvers  and  actions  known  as  the  Battle  of  the  Marne.  The  something 
referred  to  are  the  terms  of  the  treaty  made  by  Italy  with  the  Entente 
governments,  on  May  9th,  1915,  fourteen  days  before  Italy  declared  war 
upon  Austria-Hungary,  one  year,  three  months  and  nineteen  days  before 
Italy  declared  war  upon  her  other  ally,  Germany.  I  suppose  nobody  has 
taken  it  for  granted  that  the  terms  of  this  treaty  were  arrived  at  over 
night. 

Since  the  treaty  is  to  be  found  in  the  appendix,  I  will  not  go  into 
it  here  any  further  than  saying  that  the  quid  pro  quo  involved  the  annexa- 
tion of  much  Austro-Hungarian  territory,  of  districts  in  the  Balkans 
inhabited  by  Slavs,  Albanians,  Kutzo-Vlakhs,  Macedonians,  Greeks  and 
Turks,  of  some  desirable  territory  in  Asia  Minor,  to  be  taken  from  the 
Turks,  and  other  districts  in  Africa,  involving  annexations  of  large  popu- 
lations not  Italian  along  with  some  that  really  were. 

The  Sacred  Egotism  of  Diplomacy 

Thus  Italy  entered  the  War  against  Austria-Hungary  and  entered 
upon  a  state  of  armed  neutrality  against  Germany.  The  frantic  attempts 
of  the  German  government  to  prevent  all  this  was  unavailing.  The 
removal  of  Herr  von  Flotow,  the  German  ambassador  at  Rome,  who  was 
charged  with  being  inefficient,  when  he  was  merely  handicapped  by  the 
situation,  and  the  filling  of  his  place  by  Prince  von  Buelow,  the  former 
chancellor,  was  so  much  beating  of  the  air.  Nothing  could  help — not 
even  the  fine  social  connections  of  the  Princess  Buelow,  an  Italian  of 
influence,  formerly  Maria  di  Bologna,  principe  di  Camporeale.  Against 
d'Annunzio  at  home.  Sir  Edward  Grey  in  London,  Messrs.  Barrere  and 
Rodd  in  Rome,  Count  Benckendorf ,  the  Russian  ambassador  to  the  Court 
of  St.  James,  the  Marquis  de  la  Toretta,  Italian  ambassador  at  Petrograd, 
and  the  Marquis  Imperiali  at  London,  Prince  Buelow  was  as  helpless  as 
a  child,  even  in  the  face  of  the  concessions  which  the  Austro-Hungarian 
government  made  in  Italia  irredenta. 

The  war  came  despite  all  this,  and  found  the  Isonzo  border  in  the 
poorest  state  of  defense  so  far  as  the  Austrians  were  concerned.  General 
Stoeger-Steiner,  later  Austro-Hungarian  minister  of  war,  managed  to 
drive  the  Italians  from  the  Sveta  Maria  hills  at  Tolmino,  and  established 
there  the  one  position  which  Cadorna's  forces  were  never  able  to  take.   The 


THE  SACRED  EGOTISM  OF  DIPLOMACY  267 

fact  that  General  Stoeger-Steiner  had  to  do  this  with  a  battalion  of 
indifferent  garrison  troops  stationed  at  the  nearby  Laibach,  and  a  scant 
company  of  rural  gendarmes,  shows  to  what  extent  the  Central  Powers 
counted  on  the  efficacy  of  the  methods  employed  by  Prince  and  Princess 
von  Buelow.  The  German  special  ambassador  himself  seems  to  have 
overlooked  that  he  was  trying  to  hatch  the  hard  boiled  egg  of  d'Annunzio's 
sacre  egoismo,  of  which  useless  endeavor  nothing  could  come,  naturally. 

After  that  the  men  of  the  Berlin  Foreign  Office  turned  their  faces 
in  other  directions.  Turkey  was  already  in  the  War  and  all  promises  in 
that  quarter  had  been  made.  To  what  extent  these  were  committed  to 
paper,  I  do  not  know.  But  the  Ottoman  government  would  not  have 
fared  badly  by  any  means,  especially  if  the  Sultan-Caliph's  fetwah  for 
a  Holy  War  had  produced  better  results  than  it  did.  At  any  rate  Turkey- 
oi-Europe  was  to  be  continued.  So  was  Turkey  in  Southwest  Asia.  Egypt 
was  to  be  re-incorporated  in  the  Ottoman  empire.  Arabia  was  to  be  made 
to  understand  that  thereafter  it  was  really  a  province  of  Constantinople. 
When  Italy  had  entered  the  War  all  of  Northern  Africa  was  to  be  re- 
covered, and  if  fortune  permitted  it,  Morocco  was  to  become  a  German 
sphere.  The  Holy  War  call  being  effective  the  Caliphate  was  to  be  again 
what  it  had  been  of  Old.  In  the  Caucasus  region  the  boundary  of  the 
Ottoman  empire  was  to  be  extended  at  least  to  the  crest  of  the  central 
chain.  From  Persia  the  British  and  Russians  were  to  be  driven,  and  with 
India  rising,  as  was  hoped,  the  ruler  of  the  Osmanli,  an  aged  and  kind- 
hearted  man,  who  for  years  had  been  the  prisoner  of  his  brother  Abdul 
Hamid,  might  have  found  himself  over  night  in  the  possession  of  an 
empire  larger  than  that  which  Alexander  the  Great  had  in  mind. 

The  Wilhelmstrasse  made  some  promises  also  to  the  Bulgarians.  One 
of  them  was  actually  carried  out  at  the  expense  of  the  Turks —  the  border 
rectification  along  the  Maritza.  Bulgaria  was  to  get,  and  for  a  time  did 
hold,  the  entire  Dobrudja.  Macedonia  was  to  be  joined  to  her,  and  in 
Thessaly  gain  was  to  be  made  according  to  the  conduct  of  the  Greeks. 
So  long  as  King  Constantin  did  his  best  to  keep  his  country  out  of  the 
War  these  gains  remained  unknown  quantities.  Later  they  came  to  include 
all  territory  east  of  the  Struma  and  west  of  that  river  as  far  as  the  Vardar. 
In  addition  the  Bulgars  intended  to  hold  whatever  they  had  occupied  in 
Old  Serbia,  though  actual  consent  had  been  obtained  from  Berlin  and 
Vienna  only  for  the  districts  of  Vranya  and  Pirot  and  the  Timok  valley, 
through  which  latter  was  to  run  a  new  railroad  that  was  to  make  Berlin- 
to-Bagdad  so  much  more  of  a  reality.  Covetous  eyes  were  cast  by  the 
Bulgarians  also  upon  small  parts  of  eastern  Albania. 

At  one  time  the  German  government  had  offered  Rumania  all  of 
Bessarabia  and  retention  of  the  Dobrudja  as  far  as  the  Bulgarian  border 


268  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

of  1913.  Austria-Hungary  was  willing  to  cede  the  part  of  the  Bukowina 
peopled  by  Rumanians.  And  that  country,  anyway,  seemed  to  be  the 
only  one  which  had  no  great  appetite  for  new  lands  and  more  races.  The 
aspiration  of  the  Macedonians  and  Bulgarians  had  made  impossible  now, 
put  into  the  background  at  least,  for  the  time  being,  the  ''corridor  to 
Salonika"  physically,  over  which  Count  Aehrenthal  was  so  enthusiastic.  To 
Italy  had  been  offered  the  Austrian  Italia  irredenta,  so  far  this  seemed 
reasonable,  and  one  of  the  last  things  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  did  was 
to  give  the  Galicians  autonomy,  as  a  pledge  to  the  Poles  that  he  at  least 
meant  well  by  them. 

The  Pan-Germans'  Dream  of  Empire 

What  territories  Germany  herself  wanted  is  hard  to  say.  Its  censors 
saw  to  it  that  the  "Kriegsziele" — war  aims — were  never  discussed  in  the 
press,  and  on  this  point  her  government  officials  never  shed  the  weakest 
ray  of  light.  Not  even  her  allies  were  taken  into  confidence,  as  was 
natural,  perhaps,  seeing  that  the  German  army  was  the  alpha  and  omega 
of  everything  that  had  to  be  done  before  any  of  these  "desires"  could 
be  realized,  as  Sazonoff  might  put  it.  For  all  that  the  world  did  not 
remain  entirely  ^ignorant  on  this  point.  Russia  was  to  be  separated  from 
her  Baltic  provinces,  and  at  the  expense  of  Great  Britain  and  France 
a  large  colonial  empire  was  to  be  founded.  To  incorporate  large  foreign 
populations  found  little  echo  among  the  German  people,  who  seemed  to 
look  upon  the  Poles  and  some  of  the  Alsace-Lorrainers  more  as  a  punish- 
ment than  a  blessing.  Still  that  does  not  mean  that  the  Alldeutschen 
would  not  have  insisted  upon  some  such  adventure.  The  appetite  of  some 
of  these  chauvinists  was  a  wonderful  thing  to  behold. 

A  victory  of  the  German  army  would  have  had  other  results,  more- 
over. Mittel-Europa  would  have  become  a  fact.  German  hegemony  would 
have  extended  from  Riga  to  Calais  and  from  there  on  along  the  borders 
of  France,  Switzerland,  Italy,  along  the  boundaries  of  the  new  Turkey 
in  Africa,  the  shores  of  the  Red  Sea,  up  the  Persian  Gulf,  along  the 
eastern  boundaries  of  Persia  to  the  Caspian  Sea,  Caucasus,  Black  Sea,  the 
eastern  border  of  the  Greater  Rumania  and  Poland,  and  the  Baltic  princi- 
palities that  were  to  be  formed,  as  far  as  Riga,  with  Finland  and  Sweden, 
and  therefore,  Norway  included.  The  Dutch  East  Indies  would  then  have 
been  territory  under  German  protection,  and  if  by  any  chance  this  Germania 
mare — Greater  Germany — wished  to  have  coaling  stations  and  naval  bases 
in  the  Caribbean,  they  could  have  been  established  with  a  Dutch  label  on 
them. 

Such  was  the  tentative  program  of  the  Alldeutschen.    To  them  as  to 


THE  PAN-GERMANS'  DREAM  OK  EMPIRE  269 

others,  the  world  and  its  peoples  seemed  items,  mere  details,  in  dreams 
as  extravagant  as  Sazonoif  ever  had.  But  there  were  several  flaws  in 
this  great  program,  and  sensible  Germans  were  not  unmindful  of  them. 
In  the  first  place  the  political  constellation  would  change — was  bound  to 
change  in  very  little  time.  Austria-Hungary,  especially  its  Hungarian  and 
vSlav  populations  might  not  be  willing  to  pass  under  the  orders  of  the 
Prussian  Feldwebel — sergeant,  despite  the  fact  that  he  never  bites  as 
hard  as  he  barks.  Bulgaria,  too,  might  have  felt  her  oats,  and  of  the 
Turks  no  German  could  ever  predict  anything  for  the  future.  The  Turk 
is  by  nature  Francophile  and  would  have  done  what  always  has  been  done : 
Deal  with  the  man  who  gives  the  best  value  for  the  least  money.  Persia, 
Rumania  and  Poland  might  have  shown  minds  of  their  own,  and  the  Dutch 
and  Scandinavians  are  not  fire-proof  by  any  means.  That  project  would 
only  have  amounted  to  much  had  the  German  politicians  and  statesmen 
the  qualities  of  the  British  in  addition  to  their  own,  and  since  they  did 
not  have  these,  we  need  not  lose  too  much  sleep  over  the  Mittel-Europa 
that  was  to  be,  but  was  not. 

Mittel-Europa  was,  after  all,  but  the  dream  of  the  Alldeutschen,  despite 
the  fact  that  it  became  in  the  end  the  nightmare  of  the  German  race.  The 
peaceful  penetration  of  the  territories  named  was  indeed  the  plan  of  a 
larger  number  of  Germans,  but  that  differed  in  nowise  from  the  practices 
that  had  obtained  in  the  past,  with  the  benefits  of  being  secure  against 
discrimination,  and  the  profits  of  great  prestige  added.  In  other  words, 
the  German  manufacturer  and  trader  wanted  to  enjoy  the  advantages 
which  in  the  past  had  been  peculiarly  the  boon  of  the  British.  He  had  for 
so  long  dealt  in  mass-production  at  small  profit  that  the  megali  eedea  of 
the  Alldeutschen  tickled  his  fancy,  and  for  at  least  a  partial  realization  of 
their  desire  he  staked  everything  in  the  form  of  service  at  the  front,  war 
loans,  heavy  taxation,  and  finally  the  starving  of  his  wife  and  child. 

In  the  Berlin  Foreign  Office  these  things  were  not  discussed,  of 
course.  In  the  main  entrance  to  that  diplomatic  temple  crouch  two  rather 
puny  sphynxes  in  stone.  I  passed  them  many  times  and  will  admit  that 
I  found  it  difficult  repressing  a  smile  when  I  saw  that  warning  to  the 
officials  and  denizens  to  observe  silence  and  discretion. 

That,  I  take  it,  was  the  purpose  of  putting  the  lion-women  there.  It 
was  a  naive  idea  to  me,  bringing  thus  to  the  attention  of  the  foreign  callers 
the  "Byzantinism"  that  reigned  upstairs.  On  the  faces  of  the  two  creatures 
in  stone  seemed  to  be  written  the  statesman's  and  monarch's  "forever." 

Passing  them,  I  could  not  help  being  forcibly  reminded  of  the 
holes  in  the  rockfaces  along  the  right  bank  of  the  Danube  in  the  Pass  of 
Kazan,  which  once  held  the  miles  of  bracket-bridge  which  connected  the 
great  highway  of  Trajan  in  Dacia  with  its  western  and  eastern  stretches. 


270  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Of  the  great  highway  nothing  is  left  but  a  tablet  and  the  holes  in  which 
the  stout  timbers  rested.  From  the  face  of  the  rock  the  Danube  has  in  two 
thousand  years  washed  away  a  scant  two  inches,  as  the  holes — fine 
nilometers  of  eternity — show.  None  was  fonder  of  the  "forever"  than 
the  Roman,  and  today  he  is  no  more.  The  education  of  the  politician  and 
diplomatist  should  include  at  least  a  trip  through  the  somber  pass  and  its 
swirling,  racing  waters,  and  at  each  of  the  holes  in  the  rockfaces,  that  hold 
easily  all  that  remains  today  of  a  Caesar's  forever,  a  lecture  should  be 
given  them. 

The  little  sphynxes  in  stone  were  somewhat  symbolical  of  the  mentality 
of  the  German  foreign  office.  The  minds  of  the  men  who  passed  them 
going  to  or  coming  from  their  work  were  hardly  more  plastic.  These  men 
were  intelligent  enough,  to  be  sure,  were  industrious  and  had  a  keen 
perception  of  their  duty,  but  few  of  them  ever  were  able  to  see  Germany 
from  without.  Most  of  them,  indeed,  were  hardly  inclined  to  look  at  their 
country  from  within.  The  caste  system  made  that  seem  unnecessary  in 
the  case  of  some ;  it  made  it  superfluous  in  that  of  others.  If  it  was  not 
the  privileges  of  the  nobility,  it  was  the  annointment  of  the  "akademische 
Bildung" — academic  training — which  gave  to  each  and  every  higher  German 
government  official  full  warrant  to  slip,  clamlike,  into  the  shell  of  his  own 
self  sufficiency  and  stay  there.  Men  were  valued  by  their  conservatism  only. 
Those  who  showed  tendencies  toward  enterprise  were  often,  if  not  always, 
thought  dangerous.  In  the  scheme  eternal  of  the  German  empire  everything 
was  to  move  along  in  the  manner  beloved  by  the  grandfather,  and  nowhere 
was  worship  of  yesterday  carried  so  far  as  in  the  government  circles  of 
Prussia  and  Germany.  The  statesman's  forever  was  the  command  there 
for  the  erection  of  a  huge  and  imposing  state  edifice,  resting  on  sands  of 
time  that  were  the  more  fluid  the  more  solid  they  were  thought. 

German  Realpolitik  Against  British  Idealpolitik 

German  diplomacy  was  sadly  handicapped  by  reason  of  the  fact  that 
those  who  shaped  and  applied  it  were  not  versed  in  matters  related  to 
public  opinion. 

The  Germans  have  generally  been  credited  with  a  strong  penchant 
for  philosophy,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  they  possess  this.  Inclined  as 
a  people  to  be  painstaking,  analytical  and  thorough,  it  was  natural  that 
they  should  have  been  masters  in  philosophy.  But  the  shoemaker  wears 
often  the  most  neglected  of  foot  covering.  On  the  same  principle  philosophy 
was  neglected  by  the  German  government.  It  vaunted  its  great  "Real- 
politik"— practical  politics — but  practiced  a  system  that  was  excessively 
ideal,  in  so  far  as  it  was  much  removed  from  the  realities  and  actualities 


RBALPOLITIK  AGAINST  BRITISH  IDBALPOLITIK      271 

of  life,  quite  in  contrast  to  the  politics  of  its  principal  antagonist  during 
the  Great  War,  the  British  government,  which  professed  to  be  committed 
to  "Idealpolitik" — ideal  politics — but  applied  them  only  practically. 

The  German  government  would  first  announce  what  it  proposed  doing, 
and  give  the  world  a  chance  to  exercise  its  imagination  on  the  terrible 
things  that  were  to  come,  and  when  public  opinion  had  been  duly  inflamed, 
it  would  proceed  calmly  with  whatever  the  innovation  was  and  thus  add 
fuel  to  the  flame.  The  British  government  would  do  the  thing  first  and 
explain  its  great  necessity  in  the  "public  interest"  of  the  world  afterward, 
and  thus  demonstrate  easily  that  it  was  obliged  to  do  these  things — not  for 
itself  but  for  others.  Its  cruisers  would  seize  neutral  vessels  on  the  high 
seas,  carry  them  into  British  ports,  detain  them,  take  their  cargo,  seize 
their  mail,  arrest  their  passengers,  establish  zones  of  blockade  and  later  on 
the  British  government  would  leisurely  explain  that  according  to  "The 
Declaration  of  London  Order  in  Council  No.  2"  or  whatever  the  number 
might  be,  these  things  were  just  because  in  the  "public  interest"  at  home 
and  abroad  they  were  necessary. 

Public  opinion  of  the  world  remained  a  closed  chapter  to  German 
diplomacy  for  the  reason  that  there  was  in  Germany  no  public  opinion  on 
which  her  statesmen  and  officials  could  practice,  of  which  they  would 
see  the  result,  in  fact.  To  be  sure,  there  was  an  "offentliche  Meinung." 
But  that  public  opinion  was  looked  down  upon  as  something  inferior  and 
unimportant.  In  a  state  in  which  one  individual  questioned  the  right  to 
independent  thought  of  the  other,  in  which  the  class  above  denied  that  the 
class  below  had  at  all  a  right  to  think,  in  which  the  government  thought 
the  masses  really  unfit  to  govern  themselves,  and  in  which  the  masses 
tacitly  conceded  all  this  by  paying  but  the  scantest  attention  to  the  adminis- 
•  tration  of  the  public  domain,  that  could  not  be  otherwise.  The  press 
itself  promoted  this,  fostering  all  sorts  of  separatisms. 

German  public  opinion  became  in  that  manner  a  very  impotent  thing. 
It  was  never  heard  by  the  government,  except  in  protest  against  another 
advance  in  taxation.  The  question  of  what  was  being  done  with  the  money 
hardly  ever  was  broached,  and  if  it  was  actually  put,  the  answer  was 
accepted  with  all  readiness  and  without  further  inspection.  Most  of  the 
taxes  went  for  armament  on  land  and  sea.  So  long  as  the  armament 
resulted  all  was  well.  What  the  ultimate  end  would  be,  bothered  none  but 
the  socialists  and  the  few  who  were  enterprising  enough  to  assume  that 
certain  causes  will  have  a  certain  effect. 

The  character  of  any  instance  of  public  opinion  is  not  so  easily 
established.  Just  what  is  public  opinion  is  a  question  that  may  lead  to 
many  replies,  especially  when  with  it  is  coupled  the  thing  known  as  govern- 
ment opinion,  which  is  never  quite  the  same  thing.     Governments  being 


in  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

organisms  within  another  organism — society — and  often  parasitic  ones  at 
that,  they  have,  of  course,  an  opinion  of  their  own.  The  natural  influence 
of  the  leader  upon  those  whom  he  leads,  and  his  control  of  a  great  deal 
of  information,  makes  the  opinions  of  a  government  usually  of  greater 
value  than  the  views  of  the  masses.  When  the  latter  are  not  inclined  to 
take  an  intelligent  interest  in  their  own  affairs,  or  are  prevented  from 
doing  so,  government  opinion  becomes  public  opinion.  But  at  best  public 
opinion  anywhere,  even  if  it  be  of  high  quality,  is  the  refined  product  of 
the  process  of  neutralizing  the  opinions  of  the  masses  with  those  of  the 
government  and  vice  versa.  The  process  being  reciprocal  in  such  cases, 
it  follows  that  the  best  public  opinion  is  obtained  when  this  operation  of 
the  law  of  selection  and  elimination  is  least  opposed,  which  was  far  from 
being  the  case  in  Germany.  Even  during  the  War  ''ofifentliche  Meinung" 
was  never  sufficiently  respected  by  the  men  in  power  to  be  heeded. 
The  government  class  thought  no  other  but  its  own  opinion  of  import- 
ance, and  the  result  was  that  its  international  policy  and  diplomacy 
were  of  the  same  brand  and,  therefore,  entirely  unequipped  to  deal  with 
public  opinion  abroad — in  the  Anglo-Saxon  countries,  especially.  I  do  not 
mean  to  imply  that  public  opinion  in  the  British  empire  and  the  United 
States  is  the  last  word  in  that  department  of  human  affairs,  but  there 
is  no  doubt  that  with  German  public  opinion  it  compared  as  dross  to 
silver. 

German  diplomacy  was  woefully  handicapped,  therefore.  Its  agents 
disdained  public  opinion  abroad,  because  they  had  been  permitted  and 
taught  even,  to  disdain  it  at  home.  They  found  that  other  governments 
did  more  or  less  what  their  own  did,  but  were  unable  to  see  that  the 
thing  immediately  before  them  was  government  opinion  unrefined  and  as 
yet  not  modified  by  public  opinion.  In  this  manner  it  was  brought  about 
that  the  German  government  looked  upon  the  world  in  general  through  the 
glasses  of  its  own  failings,  and  the  result  was  to  be  catastrophal. 

German  Diplomacy  as  Seen  from  Within 

Germans  who  had  been  abroad  understood  all  this  well  enough  and 
were  mindful  of  the  dangers  that  came  from  it.  Many  of  them  made 
attempts  to  bring  the  thing  to  the  attention  of  the  government,  but  in  this 
they  failed  miserably.  In  the  first  place  every  German  who  selected  to  live 
away  from  the  Fatherland  was  regarded  little  better  than  a  traitor,  whose 
counsel  could  be  of  no  worth,  and,  secondly,  there  was  nothing  superior 
to  anything  that  was  German,  especially  government.  Paternalism  in  its 
unloveliest  form,  starting  with  the  "Dienstbuch"  of  the  servant,  in  which 
the  authorities  attested  the  quality  of  service  given,  to  the  itemizing  of 


GERMAN  DIPLOMACY  AS  SEEN  FROM  WITHIN      273 

ambassadors'  expense  accounts,  was  the  main  ingredient  in  this  fine  Chinese 
system  of  social  regulation. 

Small  wonder  that  the  German  diplomatist,  already  hampered  by  the 
fact  that  Entente  superiority  of  strength  and  prestige  was  against  him,  made 
so  poor  a  job  of  it.  The  chefs  de  mission  were  often  men  who  made  use  of 
their  plenary  powers,  who  were  able  to  exercise  initiative  governed  by 
discretion,  but  when  they  were  not  handicapped  by  the  poorest  quality 
of  assistance  by  their  attaches,  they  were  hamstrung  by  their  Foreign 
Office,  in  which,  for  instance,  it  was  possible  to  have  an  imperial  chancellor 
of  the  Bethmann-Hollweg  type,  a  promoted  police  official  whom  the  Great 
War  took  by  surprise  and  left  bewildered  to  such  an  extent  that  he  was 
able  to  leave  the  British  government  the  political  advantage  which  the 
use  of  the  words :    Scrap  of  paper,  resulted  in. 

It  is  not  to  the  interest  of  a  nation  when  its  highest  official  selects 
to  wear  the  boots  of  a  great  predecessor.  Prince  Bismarck,  for  instance. 
There  is  in  the  history  of  the  Great  War  no  more  pathetic  figure  than 
that  of  Chancellor  Bethmann-Hollweg,  given,  a  la  Bismarck,  to  wearing 
a  military  uniform — a  major's,  tall  and  bulky  and  small-headed;  brought 
up  in  the  Prussian  state  service,  bureaucrat,  arriviste,  servant  of  the 
emperor  and  slave  of  a  catastrophe,  head  of  a  civil  government  cowed 
by  military  decrees  and  master  of  a  misled  people — an  egotist  hanging 
on  to  an  office  for  which  he  was  the  least  fitted. 

The  European  War  was  not  very  old  before  the  German  government 
was  engaged  in  controversy  with  the  government  of  the  United  States 
in  regard  to  questions  of  International  Law  arising  from  the  blockade 
decrees  and  practices  of  the  Entente  governments,  the  purpose  of  which 
was  to  place  the  Central  Powers  under  the  disadvantages  of  siege,  to  wit: 
To  make  it  difficult  for  them,  if  not  impossible,  to  carry  on  their  military 
operations  by  cutting  off,  so  far  as  possible,  supplies  having  a  military  value. 
International  Law  had  already  delimited  Absolute  Contraband  and  Con- 
ditional Contraband,  so  far  as  this  was  feasible  in  face  of  a  variety  of 
diverging  national  interests  that  had  to  be  considered.  In  the  Declaration 
of  London,  1909,  a  few  other  faint  lines  of  demarkation  had  been  drawn. 
These,  however,  together  with  policies  formerly  supported  by  the  British 
government  itself,  had  been  totally  obliterated  by  the  several  "Declaration  of 
London  Orders  in  Council,"  upon  which  the  fate  of  all  shipping,  enemy 
and  neutral  alike,  now  depended.  In  other  words,  Great  Britain  had 
substituted  the  Orders  of  her  government's  Privy  Council,  in  the  guise 
of  "Declaration  of  London  Order  in  Council"  for  what  had  been  Inter- 
national Law. 

Before  proceeding,  it  may  be  well  to  remind  the  reader  of  what 
"International  Law"  is.     In  the  first  place  there  was  no  "International" 


274  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

law,  or,  to  put  it  in  other  words,  International  Law  was  not  a  law  in  the 
sense  in  which  municipal  law  is  this.  The  laws  passed  by  a  community 
in  behalf  of  social  regulation  are  known,  in  contradistinction  to  Inter- 
national Law,  as  Municipal  Law,  and  the  former  is  in  all  cases  subject 
to  the  latter  in  matters  concerning  the  sovereignty  of  a  state,  or  any 
community  having  the  right  to  make  municipal  laws  without  regard  of 
any  sort  for  the  laws  made  by  a  superior  body  or  government.  Thus,  the 
laws  made  by  a  colonial  government,  or  by  a  vassal  state,  do  not  effect 
international  relations  except  in  so  far  as  they  are  sanctioned  and  assumed 
by  the  governmental  body  which  has  charge  of  the  international  affairs 
of  the  country.  Municipal  law,  then,  has  a  sanctioning  authority,  that 
is  to  say,  it  has  been  accepted  by  the  executive  branch  of  a  government, 
and  usually  has  been  called  into  being  under  the  supervision  of  such  a 
body,  as  a  rule  of  conduct  for  individuals  and  groups,  the  non-observance 
of  which  will  be  punished.  In  fact  the  ability  to  apply  such  municipal  law 
is  regarded  by  most  governments  as  prima  facie  evidence  that  another 
government,  after  a  revolution,  for  instance,  is  recognizable  as  de  facto, 
or  the  government  in  fact,  as  well  as  of  pretension — de  jure. 

International  Law  a  Mere  Rule  of  G>nduct 

International  Law  differs  from  municipal  law  in  so  far  as  in  the 
past  it  has  been  found  impossible  to  devise  a  means  by  which  it  could  be 
applied  with  enforcement,  by  penal  means,  as  the  alternative  to  non-com- 
pliance. Moreover,  International  Law,  is  in  principle  not  obligatory.  It 
is  at  best  but  a  doctrine  adhered  to  by  nations  large  and  small,  which, 
regardless  of  prominence,  are  admitted  as  equals  under  the  operation  of 
the  principle  known  as  sovereignty. 

Non-observance  of  the  terms  of  International  Law  may  indeed  bring 
the  offender  to  the  bar  of  world  public  opinion,  it  may  also  make  the 
offender  liable  to  punitive  measures  employed  by  other  governments,  but 
at  best  the  judicial  adjudication  of  infractions  of  International  Law  may 
be  attempted  only  before  a  body  of  reviewers,  under  an  agreement  of 
arbritation,  to  which  the  name  of  court  cannot  be  given  for  the  reason  that 
the  body  in  question  lacks  the  peculiar  and  inherent  powers  of  a  court — 
it  can  not  punish.  The  findings  of  the  body  may  indeed  assume  a  lenient 
punitive  character,  but  that  does  not  mean  that  they  will  be  accepted  in  that 
light  by  the  culprit  government.  In  fact  that  government  could  not  accept 
them  without  surrendering,  temporarily  at  least,  a  most  essential  quality 
of  sovereignty — the  inviolability  of  its  integrity,  be  this  of  a  material  or 
a  metaphysical  aspect.  The  whole  category  of  often  so-called  questions  of 
honor  belongs  into  this  department  of  sovereignty. 


INTERNATIONAL  LAW  A  RULE  OF  CONDUCT         275 

International  Law,  then,  is  not  law  at  all.  It  is  an  agreement  among 
civilized  and  independent  states,  almost  entirely  founded  on  precedents,  to 
govern  conduct  in  times  of  peace  and  of  war  so  that  it  will  harmonize  with, 
what  in  the  absence  of  a  better  term,  may  be  styled,  international  morality. 

When  this  agreement  is  given  a  more  concrete  form  in  a  contract 
between  two  nations  or  groups  of  them,  it  is  given  the  character  of  treaty. 
So  long  as  a  treaty  is  such  that  it  does  not  openly  violate  the  rights  of 
another  state  or  group,  and  International  Law,  therefore,  its  terms  are 
generally  published  by  the  contracting  governments.  Treaties  that  are  not 
in  this  manner  given  publicity  are  known  as  secret  treaties,  and  their  terms 
are  generally  withheld  from  common  knowledge,  because  openly  or  im- 
pliedly they  threaten  another  nation  or  a  group  of  other  nations. 

International  Law,  in  addition  to  being  no  mandate  of  a  law-giving 
body,  may,  as  is  shown  here,  be  violated  in  contemplation  by  such  govern- 
ments as  may  band  together  for  that  purpose,  and,  who,  before  that,  are 
fairly  certain  that  their  overt  act  will  bring  upon  them  no  consequences 
they  need  fear.  The  conspiracy  would  not  be  apparent  until  its  result  was 
there — a  war  of  aggression,  and  after  that  even  it  would  not  be  so  very 
simple  to  fix  the  blame  so  long  as  the  diplomacy  of  the  offending  govern- 
ments was  able  to  mislead  the  neutral  public.  Then,  too,  with  a  state  of 
war  prevailing,  the  offending  government  would  still  enjoy  every  advantage 
of  International  Law,  and  could  meet  all  contentions  of  the  neutrals  with 
the  plea  that  the  "public  interest"  of  its  state  did  not  permit  just  then 
a  stricter  adherence  to  rules  of  conduct  promotive  of  the  "public  interest" 
of  neutrals.    So  elastic  a  thing  is  International  "Law." 

This  is  the  attitude  which  was  assumed  by  Great  Britain  in  regard 
to  its  blockade  of  the  German  ports  and  the  condition  that  arose  therefrom 
to  neutral  ships  and  cargoes.  Had  there  been  a  sanctioning  authority  for 
International  Law,  the  Declaration  of  London,  1909,  would  not  have  been 
superceded  by  the  "Declaration  of  London  Orders  in  Council."  The  sanc- 
tioning authority,  if  disposed  to  be  just,  would  have  informed  the  British 
government  that  International  Law,  as  interpreted  by  the  Declaration  of 
Paris,  1856,  would  have  to  be  observed.  But  since  it  is  not  easy  to  make 
accountable  and  punish  a  powerful  and  sovereign  state.  Great  Britain  went 
her  way  and  disregarded  consistently  every  protest  made  by  the  neutral 
governments. 

The  Declaration  of  London  was  based  on  the  Declaration  of  Paris  in 
regard  to  Maritime  Law.  Of  the  latter  I  will  give  here  Articles  2,  3  and  4, 
which  deal  with  this  subject. 

(2)  "The  neutral  flag  covers  enemy's  goods  with  the  exception  of 
contraband  of  war. 


276  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

(3)  "Neutral  goods,  with  the  exception  of  contraband  of  war,  are 
not  liable  to  capture  under  the  enemy's  flag. 

(4)  "Blockades,  in  order  to  be  binding,  must  be  effective,  that  is 
to  say,  maintained  by  a  force  sufficient  really  to  prevent  access  to  the 
coasts  of  the  enemy." 

We  find,  according  to  the  American  White  Papers,  that  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States,  in  a  communication  to  the  British  government, 
dated  March  30th,  1915,  replying  specifically  to  the  Order  in  Privy  Council, 
of  March  15th,  still  adhered  stoutly  to  the  terms  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris. 
In  that  note  the  Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Bryan,  said : 

"Moreover  the  rules  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  of  1856 — 
among  them  that  free  ships  make  free  goods — will  hardly  at  this 
day  be  disputed  by  the  signatories  of  that  solemn  agreement." 

The  signatories  are :  Great  Britain,  Austria,  France,  Prussia,  Russia, 
Sardinia  (the  former  government  in  Italy)  and  Turkey. 

The  Earlier  View  of  the  American  Government 

On  October  21st,  of  the  same  year,  the  government  of  the  United 
States  was  still  of  the  same  opinion,  it  seems.  In  a  note  to  the  British 
government,  bearing  that  date,  and  "relating  to  restrictions  upon  American 
commerce  by  certain  measures  adopted  by  the  British  government  during 
the  present  war,"  the  Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Lansing,  says: 

"The  Declaration  of  Paris  in  1856,  which  has  been  universally 
recognized  as  correctly  stating  the  rule  of  international  law  as 
to  blockade,  expressly  declares  that  'blockades  in  order  to  be 
binding,  must  be  effective;  that  is  to  say,  maintained  by  force 
sufficient  really  to  prevent  access  to  the  coast  of  the  enemy." 
The  effectiveness  of  a  blockade  is  manifestly  a  question  of  fact. 
It  is  common  knowledge  that  the  German  coasts  are  open  to  trade 
with  the  Scandinavian  countries  and  that  German  naval  vessels 
cruise  both  in  the  North  Sea  and  in  the  Baltic  and  seize  and 
bring  into  German  ports  neutral  vessels  bound  for  Scandinavian 
and  Danish  ports.  Furthermore,  from  the  recent  placing  of  cotton 
on  the  British  list  of  contraband  of  war,  it  appears  that  the 
British  government  have  themselves  been  forced  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  blockade  is  ineffective  to  prevent  shipments  of  cotton 
from  reaching  their  enemies,  or  else  that  they  are  doubtful  as  to 
the  legality  of  the  form  of  blockade  which  they  have  sought  to 
maintain." 

Further  on  the  note  says : 

"I  believe  it  has  been  conclusively  shown  that  the  methods 
sought  to  be  employed  by  Great  Britain  to  obtain  and  use  evidence 
of  enemy  destination  of  cargoes  bound  for  neutral  ports  and  to 
impose  a  contraband  character  upon  such  cargoes  are  without 


EARLIER  VIEW  OF  AMERICAN  GOVERNMENT        277 

justification;  that  the  blockade,  upon  which  such  methods  are 
partly  founded,  is  ineffective,  illegal,  and  indefensible;  that  the 
judicial  procedure  offered  as  a  means  of  reparation  for  an  inter- 
national injury  is  inherently  defective  for  the  purpose,  and  that 
in  many  cases  jurisdiction  is  asserted  in  violation  of  the  law  of 
nations.  The  United  States,  therefore,  can  not  submit  to  the 
curtailment  of  its  neutral  rights  by  these  measures,  which  are 
admittedly  retaliatory,  and,  therefore,  illegal,  in  conception  and 
nature,  and  intended  to  punish  the  enemies  of  Great  Britain  for 
alleged  illegalities  on  their  part.  The  United  States  might  not  be 
in  a  position  to  object  to  them  if  its  interests  and  the  interests 
of  all  neutrals  were  unaffected  by  them,  but,  being  affected,  it 
can  not  with  complacence  suffer  further  subordination  of  its  rights 
and  interests  to  the  plea  that  the  exceptional  geographic  position 
of  the  enemies  of  Great  Britain  require  or  justify  oppressive  and 
illegal  practices." 

The  note  from  which  the  above  citations  are  taken  had  the  nature  of 
a  general  protest  against  the  infraction  of  International  Law  by  Great 
Britain,  the  general  character  of  which  is  made  clear  in  a  communication 
transmitted  to  the  United  States  government  by  the  British  ambassador 
at  Washington,  on  March  1st,  1915,  the  burden  of  which  is  that: 

"The  British  and  French  governments  will  therefore  hold 
themselves  free  to  detain  and  take  into  port  ships  carrying  goods 
of  presumed  enemy  destination,  ownership,  or  origin.  It  is  not 
intended  to  confiscate  such  vessels  or  cargoes  unless  they  would 
otherwise  be  liable  to  condemnation." 

What  such  "presuming"  meant  was  clear  to  the  government  of  the 
United  States  when  it  expressed  itself  in  the  note  of  October  21st,  1915. 
An  appendix  to  the  note  gave  the  names  of  273  vessels  and  the  nature  of 
their  cargoes,  together  with  the  date  of  arrival  and  departure  from  the 
port  of  Kirkwall,  incident  to  the  change  of  course  forced  upon  the  com- 
manders of  the  neutral  ships  by  the  British  Government.  The  period 
covered  was  a  short  one:  'March  11th  to  June  17th,  1915.  Before  that 
155  neutral  vessels  had  been  taken  to  British  ports,  of  which  in  40  cases 
the  cargo  had  to  be  discharged  to  be  held  for  prize  court  proceedings.  In 
the  case  of  seizures  antedating  the  British  communication  of  March  1st, 
1915,  the  British  government  had  employed  a  favorite  method  of  its  own: 
It  had  gone  ahead  and  done  what  it  thought  best  in  the  public  interest. 
The  explanation  could  wait. 

By  the  end  of  August  of  that  year  incomplete  data  showed  that  the 
British  government  had  obliged  511  neutral  vessels  to  put  into  British 
ports  against  their  will.  Ships  no  longer  sailed  to  or  from  their  neutral 
ports,  but  made  the  British  ports  of  Kirkwall  and  Falmouth,  and  others, 
ports  of  obligatory  call,  as  ordered  by  the  Orders  in  Privy  Council.  This 
under  the  penalty,  that  if  caught  on  the  high  seas  by  the  British  cruisers, 


278  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

without  having  their  papers  viseed  in  one  of  the  British  ports  of  search, 
they  would  lay  themselves  open  to :  From  long  detention  in  a  British  port  to 
confiscation  of  ship  and  cargo.  International  Law,  specifically  the  Declara- 
tion of  Paris,  1856,  had  been  superceded  in  this  respect  entirely  by  the 
"Declaration  of  London  Orders  in  Council,"  to  which  France,  Russia  and 
later,  Italy,  gave  their  willing  assent. 

The  World  from  Now  On  "Privy.&)un8elled" 

I  will  give  here  one  of  the  Orders  in  its  entirety,  so  that  it  may  do 
service  as  an  illustration  of  the  acts  to  which  the  note  of  the  United 
States  government,  cited  above,  protested  in  such  vigorous  language : 

ORDER  IN  COUNCIL 

At  the  Court  at  Buckingham  Palace,  the  20th  day  of  Octo- 
ber, 1915. 

Present,  the  King's  Most  Excellent  Majesty  in  Council. 

Whereas  by  the  Declaration  of  London  Order  in  Council 
No.  2,  1914,  His  Majesty  was  pleased  to  declare  that,  during  the 
present  hostilities,  the  provisions  of  the  said  Declaration  of  Lon- 
don should,  subject  to  certain  exceptions  and  modifications  therein 
specified,  be  adopted  and  put  in  force  by  His  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment; and 

Whereas,  by  Article  57  of  the  said  Declaration,  it  is  provided 
that  a  neutral  or  enemy  character  of  a  vessel  is  determined  by 
the  flag  which  she  is  entitled  to  fly;  and 

Whereas  it  is  no  longer  expedient  to  adopt  the  said  Article: 

Now,  therefore,  His  Majesty,  by  and  with  the  advice  of  His 
Privy  Council,  is  pleased  to  order,  and  it  is  hereby  ordered,  that 
from  and  after  this  date  Article  57  of  the  Declaration  of  London 
shall  cease  to  be  adopted  and  put  in  force. 

In  lieu  of  the  said  Article,  British  Prize  Courts  shall  apply 
the  rules  and  principles  formerly  observed  in  such  Courts. 

This  Order  may  be  cited  as  "The  Declaration  of  London 
Order  in  Council,  1915." 

And  the  Lords  Commissioners  of  His  Majesty's  Treasury, 
the  Lords  Commissioners  of  the  Admiralty,  and  each  of  His 
Majesty's  Principal  Secretaries  of  State,  the  President  of  the 
Probate,  Divorce,  and  Admiralty  Division  of  the  High  Court  of 
Justice,  all  other  Judges  of  His  Majesty's  Prize  Courts,  and  all 
Governors,  Officers,  and  Authorities  whom  it  may  concern,  are 
to  give  the  necessary  directions  herein  as  to  them  may  respectively 
appertain.  J.  C.  Le^duE. 

But  British  "public  interest"  was  to  demand  a  more  sweeping  measure 
before  long.  Ati  Order  in  Council,  dated  March  30th,  1916,  orders  as 
follows : 

"The  provisions  of  the  Declaration  of  London  Chrder  in 


THE  WORLD  NOW  "PRIVY-COUNSELLED'^  279 

Council  No.  2,  1914,  shall  not  be  deemed  to  limit  or  to  have  limited 
in  any  way  the  right  of  His  Majesty,  in  accordance  with  the  law 
of  nations,  to  capture  goods  upon  the  grounds  that  they  were 
conditional  contraband,  nor  to  affect  or  to  have  affected  the 
liability  of  conditional  contraband  to  capture,  whether  the  carriage 
of  the  goods  to  their  destination  be  direct  or  entail  transhipment 
or  a  subsequent  transport  by  land. 

"The  provisions  of  Article  1  (ii)  and  (iii)  of  the  said 
Order  in  Council  shall  apply  to  Absolute  Contraband  as  well  as  to 
Conditional  Contraband. 

"From  and  after  the  date  of  the  Order,  Article  19  of  the 
Declaration  of  London  shall  cease  to  be  adopted  or  put  in  force. 
Neither  a  vessel  nor  her  cargo  shall  be  immune  from  capture  for 
breach  of  blockade  upon  the  sole  grounds  that  she  is  at  the  moment 
on  her  way  to  a  nonblockaded  port." 

The  heavy  hand  of  Great  Britain  was  now  upon  all  trade  on  the  high 
seas,  to  and  from  neutral  ports,  or  through  waters  that  had  been  declared 
within  the  zone  of  the  British  blockade.  Thereafter,  all  Dutch,  Danish, 
Swedish  and  most  of  the  Norwegian  shipping  had  to  put  into  a  British 
port  of  search,  since  meeting  with  an  Allied  cruiser  without  evidence  that 
the  ship  had  been  in  such  a  port  of  search  for  an  inspection  of  papers, 
cargo,  mail,  passengers  and  crew  meant  going  through  the  British  Prize 
Courts,  with  condemnation  and  seizure  in  prospect.  The  previous  protests 
of  the  government  of  the  United  States  had  been  so  much  beating  of  the 
air,  and  the  small  neutrals  were  helpless.  There  was  none  but  British  and 
Allied  freedom  of  the  seas,  and  the  very  scant  sphere  that  had  been  left 
to  neutral  shipping  was  a  little  later  wiped  out  completely. 

Under  the  auspices  of  the  United  States  government,  Great  Britain 
went  in  the  public  interest  so  far  as  to  deny  neutrals  the  right  to  import 
anything  from  any  neutral  port  without  consent  secured  from  the  belliger- 
ents. Maritime  Law  of  any  sort  was  no  more.  The  Declaration  of  London 
had  been  forgotten,  and  the  government  of  the  United  States,  hitherto 
the  stoutest  champion  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  complacently  forgot 
that  there  ever  had  been  such  a  thing. 

The  fact  is  that  neutral  public  interests  had  made  way  for  Allied 
national  necessities  and  emergencies  of  war,  and  that  these  were  met  by 
the  Entente  in  a  manner  agreeable  to  the  strong — themselves.  In  harmony 
with  that,  neutral  shipping  was  detained  in  United  States  ports  for  weeks 
and  months  at  a  time,  and,  ultimately,  this  went  so  far  as  to  lead  to  the 
commandeering  of  every  Dutch  vessel  in  Allied  and  United  States  ports 
under  the  invoking  of  a  measure  that  was  thought  obsolete  but  which 
was  resuscitated  when  it  was  convenient.  There  was  a  precedent  for  this, 
of  course.    But  it  was  a  precedent  made  in  the  same  camp,  by  the  British 


280  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

government,  when  it  discarded  Article  57  of  the  Declaration  of  London  and 
substituted  therefore  the  rules  and  principles  of  prize  court  procedure 
applied  by  Great  Britain  before  that — during  the  Civil  War,  to  mention 
one  of  the  occasions. 

On  May  10th,  1916,  the  government  of  the  United  States  did  indeed 
voice  a  feeble  protest  against  the  Order  in  Council  of  March  30th.  The 
note  dealt  with  specific  instances.  It  is  of  enough  interest  to  have  its  last 
two  paragraphs  quoted : 

"I  observe  from  your  note  that  you  have  been  instructed  by 
Sir  Edward  Grey  to  inform  me  that  *'the  immunity  from  capture 
at  present  enjoyed  by  the  American  Transatlantic  Company's  ves- 
sels can  only  be  continued  provided  that  an  assurance  is  given 
by  the  company  that  the  vessels  will  not  trade  with  Scandinavia 
or  Holland." 

"Under  the  circumstances,  before  giving  further  consideration 
to  the  matters  referred  to  in  your  note  I  would  like  to  be  informed 
whether,  as  would  appear  from  your  note,  it  is  the  intention  of 
the  British  Government  to  repudiate  their  promise  respecting  the 
treatment  of  these  vessels,  which  in  good  faith  has  been  relied  on 
by  this  government  and  by  the  owners  of  these  vessels. 

Robert  Lansing." 

Here  I  may  add  that  at  this  time  there  were  already  active  in  the 
port  of  New  York,  under  the  very  eyes  of  United  States  government 
officials,  agents  of  the  British  government,  who  inspected  cargoes  and  the 
passports  of  passengers,  and  were  in  position  to  refuse  transport  to  either 
at  will.  No  master  of  a  vessel  could  be  induced  to  take  aboard  a  shipment 
or  passenger  upon  which  a  British  agent  had  frowned.  Meanwhile  the 
British  blacklist  was  in  operation,  despite  the  fact  that  on  J^nnary  25th, 
1916,  the  United  States  government  had  expressed  itself  as  follows: 

"As  it  is  an  opinion  generally  held  in  this  countrv,  in  which 
this  government  shares,  that  the  act  has  been  framed  without  a 
proper  regard  for  the  right  of  persons  domiciled  in  the  United 
States,  whether  they  be  American  citizens  or  subjects  of  countries 
at  war  with  Great  Britain,  to  carry  on  trade  with  persons  in 
belligerent  countries,  and  that  the  exercise  of  this  right  may  be 
subject  to  denial  or  abridgment  in  the  course  of  the  enforcement 
of  the  act,  the  Government  of  the  United  States  is  constrained 
to  express  to  His  Majesty's  Government  the  grave  apprehensions 
which  are  entertained  on  this  subject  by  this  government,  bv  the 
Congress,  and  by  traders  domiciled  in  the  United  States.  It  is, 
therefore,  necessary  ...  to  contest  the  legality  and  right- 
fulness of  imposing  restrictions  upon  the  freedom  of  American 
trade  in  this  manner." 

The  answer  to  all  this  by  Germany  was  the  employing  of  submarines 
in  an  ineflFective  blockade  that  was  as  much  contrary  to  the  terms  and 


THE  WORLD  NOW  "PRIVY-COUNSELLED"  281 

spirit  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  1856,  as  was  the  British,  The  measure 
of  the  Germans  had  for  all  that  proper  support  in  the  principle  of  reprisal 
fully  recognized  by  International  Law. 

By  and  large  the  attitude  of  the  government  of  the  United  States 
liad  been  that  the  British  blockade  was  not  effective,  because  it  was  not 
in  fact  complete,  since  German  merchant  vessels  could  with  immunity 
trade  with  Norway  and  Sweden  and  secure  via  these  countries  supplies 
from  the  United  States  and  other  countries.  German  men-of-war  were 
still  able  to  take  prizes  in  the  North  Sea.  The  British  blockade  was  indeed 
a  paper  affair,  which  was  rendered  effective  only,  and  in  violation  of 
International  Law,  when  the  British  government  placed  under  duress  and 
coercion  all  neutral  shipping.  At  first  this  was  accomplished  by  the  con- 
ditions under  which  bunker  coal  could  be  obtained  in  British  ports,  and 
later,  the  timidity  of  the  neutrals  having  sufficiently  encouraged  Great 
Britain,  this  was  done  frankly  by  Orders  in  Privy  Council  in  the  manner 
here  described.  To  the  interests  of  the  neutrals  and  to  International 
law  no  attention  was  paid  by  the  Entente  bent  upon  winning  the  war. 

Diplomacy  and  the  Question  of  Food 

The  first  reply  of  the  German  government  to  the  British  blockade 
rules  was  the  announcement  that  it  had  established  a  zone  of  blockade  in 
the  waters  of  Great  Britain,  chosing  the  term  "war  zone,"  for  the  reason 
that  with  the  means  to  be  employed,  the  submarine,  any  other  term  could 
not  well  serve  the  purpose.  The  British  announcement  was  dated  November 
4th,  1914,  and  took  effect  on  the  following  day.  The  German  announcement 
came  on  February  4th,  1915,  and  become  operative  on  the  18th,  the  longer 
notice — 14  days — ^being  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  desired  in  Berlin 
to  give  sufficient  warning  to  such  neutral  vessels  as  were  bound  for 
British  ports  with  cargoes  already  loaded,  and  to  warn  others  not  to  take 
such  cargoes. 

Germany  had  done  this  in  reprisal  of  the  efforts  of  the  Entente  govern- 
ments to  starve  her  population,  military  and  civil,  into  submission. 

In  a  note  dated  December  26th,  1914,  the  United  States  government 
had  drawn  the  attention  of  the  British  government  to  the  illegality  of  the 
treatment  accorded  by  the  latter  to  cargoes  of  contraband  and  conditional 
contraband  character.    Touching  upon  foodstuffs,  the  note  said: 

"That  a  consignment  *to  order'  of  articles  listed  as  condi- 
tional contraband  and  shipped  to  a  neutral  port  raises  a  legal 
presumption  of  enemy  destination  appears  to  be  directly  contrary 
to  the  doctrines  previously  held  by  Great  Britain  and  thus  stated 
by  Lord  Salisbury  during  the  South  African  War : 

"  ^Foodstuffs,  though  having  a  hostile  destination,  can  be 


282  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

considered  as  contraband  of  war  only  if  they  are  for  the  enemy's 
forces ;  it  is  not  sufficient  that  they  are  capable  of  being  so  used, 
it  must  be  shown  that  this  was  in  fact  their  destination  at  the  time 
of  their  seizure/  " 

To  this  note  the  British  government  replied : 

"We  are  confronted  with  the  growing  danger  that  neutral 
countries  contiguous  to  the  enemy  will  become  on  a  scale  hitherto 
unprecedented  a  base  of  supplies  for  the  armed  forces  of  our 
enemies  and  for  materials  for  manufacturing  armament.  The 
trade  figures  of  imports  show  how  strong  this  tendency  is,  but 
we  have  no  complaint  to  make  of  the  governments  of  those 
countries,  which  so  far  as  we  are  aware  have  not  departed  from 
the  proper  rules  of  neutrality." 

We  seem  to  deal  here  with  a  contradiction  in  the  same  sentence.  If 
the  neutral  government  had  not  departed  from  the  proper  rules  of  neutrality, 
as  they  indeed  had  not,  then  where  was  the  danger  of  which  Sir  Edward 
Grey  speaks?  That  danger  lay,  of  course,  in  the  fact  that  adherence  to 
International  Law,  on  the  part  of  the  Entente  governments,  would  have 
resulted  in  the  importation  of  food  for  the  civil  population  of  the  Central 
States. 

Speaking  of  the  notice  of  the  German  government,  in  regard  to  the 
war  zone  in  British  waters,  the  American  government,  on  February  10th, 
1915,  expressed  itself  to  the  effect: 

"The  Government  of  the  United  States  views  those  possi- 
bilities with  such  grave  concern  that  it  feels  it  to  be  its  privilege, 
and  indeed  its  duty  in  the  circumstances,  to  request  the  Imperial 
German  Government  to  consider  before  action  is  taken  the  criti- 
cal situation  in  respect  of  the  relations  of  this  country  and  Ger- 
many which  might  arise  were  the  German  naval  forces,  in  carrying 
out  the  policy  foreshadowed  in  the  Admiralty's  proclamation, 
to  destroy  any  merchant  vessel  of  the  United  States  or  cause  the 
death  of  American  citizens." 

On  the  same  day  a  note  to  the  British  government  pointed  out,  that: 

"Assuming  the  foregoing  reports  are  true,  the  Government 
of  the  United  States,  reserving  for  future  consideration  the  legality 
and  propriety  of  the  deceptive  use  of  the  flag  of  a  neutral  power 
in  any  case  for  the  purpose  of  avoiding  capture,  desires  very 
respectfully  to  point  out  to  His  Britannic  Majesty's  Government 
the  serious  consequences  which  may  result  to  American  vessels 
and  American  citizens  if  this  practice  is  continued." 

The  note  was  due  to  the  practice,  already  indulged  in  by  British 
merchant  ships,  of  sailing  under  neutral  flags,  and  a  distinction  was  drawn 
between  the  "occasional  use  of  the  flag  of  a  neutral  or  an  enemy  under 
the  stress  of  immediate  pursuit"  and  the  "explicit  sanction  by  a  belligerent 
government  for  its  merchant  ships  generally  to  fly  the  flag  of  a  neutral 


DIPLOMACY  AND  THE  QUESTION  OE  EOOD         283 

power  within  certain  portions  of  the  high  seas  which  are  presumed  to  be 
frequented  with  hostile  warships." 

The  government  of  the  United  States  was  then  still  mindful  of  an 
example  in  neutrality  which  Thomas  Jefferson  had  given,  in  a  note  to  the 
British  government,  September  7th,  1793,  in  which  he  said  in  part: 

"It  is  not  enough  for  a  nation  to  say  we  and  our  friends  will 
buy  your  produce.  We  have  a  right  to  answer  that  it  suits  us 
better  to  sell  to  their  enemies  as  well  as  their  friends.  Our  ships 
do  not  go  to  France  to  return  empty;  they  go  to  exchange  the 
surplus  of  our  produce  which  we  can  spare  for  the  surplusses  of 
other  kinds  which  they  can  spare  and  we  want;  which  they  can 
furnish  on  better  terms,  and  more  to  our  mind,  than  Great  Britain 
and  her  friends.     ...  ; 

**Were  we  to  withhold  from  her  (France)  supplies  of  provi- 
sions, we  should  in  like  manner  be  bound  to  withhold  them  from 
her  enemies  also,  and  thus  shut  to  ourselves  all  the  ports  of 
Europe  where  corn  is  in  demand  or  make  ourselves  parties  in  the 
war.  This  is  a  dilemma  which  Great  Britain  has  no  right  to  force 
upon  us,  and  for  which  no  pretext  can  be  found  in  any  part  of 
our  conduct.  She  may,  indeed,  feel  the  desire  of  starving  an 
enemy  nation,  but  she  can  have  no  right  of  doing  it  at  our  loss 
nor  of  making  us  the  instruments  of  it." 

To  reach  an  agreement  that  would  be  fair  to  all  concerned  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  proposed,  on  February  20th,  the  following : 

"Germany  and  Great  Britain  to  agree: 

"That  neither  will  plant  any  floating  mines,  whether  upon  the 
high  seas  or  in  territorial  waters ;  that  neither  will  plant  upon  the 
high  seas  anchored  mines  except  within  cannon  range  of  harbors 
for  defensive  purposes  only.     ... 

"That  neither  will  use  submarines  to  attack  merchant  vessels 
of  any  nationality  except  to  enforce  the  right  of  visit  and  search. 

"That  each  will  require  their  respective  merchant  vessels 
not  to  use  neutral  flags  for  the  purpose  of  disguise  or  russe  de 
guerre. 

"Germany  to  agree: 

"That  all  importations  of  food  or  foodstuffs  from  the  United 
States  (and  from  such  other  neutral  countries  as  may  ask)  into 
Germany  shall  be  consigned  to  agencies  to  be  designated  by  the 
United  States  government;  that  these  American  agencies  shall 
have  entire  charge  and  control  without  interference  on  the  part 
of  the  German  government  .  .  .  and  shall  distribute  them 
solely  ...  to  noncombatants  only;  and  that  such  food 
and  foodstuffs  will  not  be  requisitioned  by  the  German  govern- 
ment for     .      .      .     the  use  of  the  armed  forces  of  Germany. 

"Great  Britain  to  agree: 

"That  food  and  foodstuffs  will  not  be  placed  on  the  absolute 
contraband  list  and  that  shipments  of  such  commodities  will  not 
be  interfered  with  or  detained  by  British  authorities  if  consigned 


284  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

to  agencies  designated  by  the  United  States  Government  in  Ger- 
many for  the  .  .  .  distribution  solely  to  the  noncombatant 
population." 

To  this  proposal  the  German  government  agreed  readily  enough.  It 
accepted  the  conditions  in  regard  to  floating  and  anchored  mines,  and 
announced  itself  as  ready  to  limit  the  use  of  submarines  as  suggested. 
The  conditions  governing  the  importation  of  food  and  foodstuffs  were 
also  accepted,  it  being  reserved,  however,  to  import  also  raw  material  needed 
for  the  noncombatant  population,  and  forage,  in  accordance  with  the 
provisions  concerning  Conditional  Contraband  of  the  Declaration  of  Lon- 
don. In  its  note  the  German  government  hoped  that  an  agreement  would 
be  reached  and  that  a  way  would  be  found  for  excluding  the  "shipping 
of  munitions  of  war  from  neutral  countries  on  ships  of  any  nationality." 

The  replies  of  the  French  and  British  government  were  almost  similar 
and  equally  negative.    Nothing  came  of  the  plan,  on  that  account. 

The  British  note  said: 

"Her  (Germany's)  opponents  are  therefore  driven  to  frame 
retaliatory  measures  in  order  in  their  turn  to  prevent  commodities 
of  any  kind  reaching  or  leaving  Germany.  These  measures  will, 
however,  be  enforced  by  the  British  and  French  governments 
without  risk  to  neutral  ships  or  to  neutral  or  noncombatant  lives 
and  in  strict  observance  of  the  dictates  of  humanity." 

What  these  eloquent  words  came  to  mean  before  very  long  has  already 
been  seen.  The  fact  is  that  at  the  very  moment  they  were  uttered  they 
were  a  hollow  phrase.    Such  is  diplomacy. 

Fulcrum  of  a  Diplomatic  See-Saw 

The  American  note  of  February  20th  should  have  convinced  the 
Berlin  government  that  the  government  of  the  United  States  had  done 
everything  within  reason  to  bring  about  the  state  of  affairs  which  Germany 
desired.  The  proposal  made  by  Mr.  Bryan  was  a  wholehearted  one,  and  had 
Great  Britain  and  France  willed  it  the  European  War  would  have  assumed 
a  totally  different  complexion  then  and  there.  Knowing  what  the  temper 
in  Germany  was  at  that  time,  I  must  remain  somewhat  skeptical  toward 
the  possibility  that  Mr.  Bryan's  kind  offices  would  have  led  to  a  quick 
peace,  as  he  hoped.    The  militarist  party  was  still  strong  in  the  saddle. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  probable  that  the  acceptance  by  the  Triple 
Entente  of  an  agreement  of  the  sort  outlined  by  him  would  have  taken 
much  of  the  wind  out  of  the  sails  of  the  chauvinists.  The  government  was 
vehement  in  its  assertions  that  the  war  was  for  the  Germans  one  of 
defense,  as  indeed  it  was  become,  and  by  February  of   1915  the  first 


FULCRUM  OF  A  DIPLOMATIC  SEE-SAW  285 

excitement  of  the  War,  and  the  flush  of  victory,  had  cooled  down  very 
much.  It  is  but  reasonable  to  assume  that  a  readiness  on  the  part 
of  the  Entente  governments,  to  restore  that  which  they  had  taken  away, 
the  import  in  sufficient  quantities  of  food,  would  have  been  accepted  by 
the  German  public  as  an  indication  that  the  men  in  Berlin  had  drawn 
the  long  bow  in  their  protestations  as  to  the  causes  and  nature  of  the 
conflict.  On  the  other  hand,  the  German  militarists  might  have  disregarded 
such  an  offer  of  peace  entirely. 

To  engage  now  in  vain  speculations  as  to  what  might  have  been  is  a 
vain  effort,  of  course.  As  the  government  of  the  United  States  had  to 
point  out,  again  and  again,  it  could  not  shape  its  negotiations  with  either 
belligerent  camps  by  conditions  set  by  the  other.  The  fact  that  the  Berlin 
government — now  on  the  defense  in  all  matters  diplomatic — was  by  far 
the  worst  offender  in  that  respect  shows  how  little  these  men  really  knew 
of  statecraft  and  diplomacy.  That  aspect  of  their  notes  was  but  another 
expression  of  the  fact  that  they  could  not  see  anything  beyond  their  own 
frontiers.  Such  tactics  could  only  tend  to  aggravate  a  situation,  and  the 
veriest  novice  in  statecraft  should  have  known  that  there  was  nothing 
to  be  gained  by  promising  the  government  of  the  United  States  something 
which  was  contingent  upon  a  certain  sort  of  conduct  on  the  part  of  the 
Entente.  Berlin  simply  did  not  know  when  to  say  yes  or  no.  In  routine 
that  'Metternichian  indulgence  may  have  its  place,  but  when  great  issues 
are  to  be  decided  plain  transaction  should  take  the  place  of  "diplomacy." 

Meanwhile,  it  was  not  borne  in  mind  that  the  United  States  govern- 
ment had  problems  of  its  own  to  meet.  So  far  as  these  were  due  to  the 
arrogant  conduct  of  the  Entente  government  they  might  have,  soon  or 
late,  led  to  exactly  the  situation  which  Germany  desired,  to  wit :  strained 
relations.  The  most  foolish  of  tactical  mistakes  which  the  German  govern- 
ment made  was  to  press  its  own  case,  by  acts  of  a  precarious  nature,  at 
a  time  when  it  should  have  given  the  people  of  the  United  States  every 
opportunity  to  look  upon  the  Entente  governments  as  the  only  violators 
of  International  Law,  the  Declaration  of  Paris  and  that  of  London. 

The  men  in  Berlin,  being  totally  ignorant  in  the  management  of  public 
opinion  and  very  disdainful  of  it,  were  never  able  to  see  that  the  government 
of  the  United  States  was  still  hampered  by  the  impression  which  the 
violation  of  Belgium's  neutrality  had  made  upon  the  British  propaganda- fed 
American  people.  The  leaders  in  Germany  looked  upon  such  acts  as  an 
attendant  evil  of  war,  and,  the  proof  of  duplicity,  by  the  Belgian  govern- 
ment, having  now  been  obtained,  they  allowed  themselves  to  totally  for- 
get that  a  grave  wrong  had  been  done,  feeling,  meanwhile,  it  seems,  that 
the  finding  of  the  documents  had  totally  absolved  them.  In  that  they 
had  against  them  the  "first"  impression,  always  a  dangerous  thing,  and 


286  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

while  the  authenticity  of  the  papers  could  not  be  doubted,  they  were 
of  little  avail  now,  especially  with  a  people  so  subject  to  impulsiveness 
and  snap-judgment  as  that  of  the  United  States. 

There  is  no  country  in  which  explaining  has  ever  helped  so  little 
as  in  the  United  States.  The  facts  were  these :  The  German  army  had 
invaded  Blegium  without  provocation  by  the  Belgians,  so  far  as  then 
known.  That  such  provocation  was  proven  afterward  could  not  affect 
the  situation  very  much.  Indeed,  one  can  not  see  why  it  should  have 
done  this.  The  Belgian  government  might  yet  have  repented  at  the  eleventh 
hour,  and  our  conception  of  equity  and  fairness  is  against  the  hanging  of 
a  man  for  a  crime  he  may  have  merely  contemplated.  In  that  direction 
the  German  government,  had  it  known  anything  of  public  opinion  in  the 
United  States  at  all,  would  have  looked  for  no  alleviation  of  its  condition. 

What  Machiavel  Would  Have  Done 

To  be  sure  many  things  might  have  been  different  at  that  moment. 
With  a  Machiavel  in  the  chair  of  the  German  chancellor,  Sir  Edward 
Goschen  would  have  left  with  the  assurance  that  the  German  government 
knew  positively  that  Belgium  intended  to  cast  off  her  neutrality  herself. 
And  the  world  public  would  have  heard  of  it.  Such  a  diplomatist  would 
have  said  that  the  German  government  had  indubitable  proof  that  there  was 
an  anti-German  understanding  between  Belgium  and  the  Triple  Entente. 
If  the  documents  had  then  been  found  in  Brussels  there  would  have  been 
a  real  case,  and  many  expressions  of  surprise  and  disgust.  If  they  had 
not  been  found,  assuming  that  the  case  had  stopped  short  of  forgery, 
there  would  have  been  many  who  would  have  believed  the  assertion  of  the 
Machiavel  anyway.  As  it  was  the  German  government  and  people  were 
laboring  under  the  punishment  which  Bethmann-HoUweg's  reference  to  a 
"scrap  of  paper"  had  so  justly  earned.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  the 
defunct  governmental  machine  in  Berlin,  one  thing  must  remain  to  its 
credit:  That  it  was  frank  enough  to  avow  that  the  invasion  of  Belgium 
was  a  deliberate  act.  It  will  always  be  doubted  that  some  other  statesmen 
of  the  time  would  have  done  the  same  thing.  There  would  have  been  a 
regulation  sentence,  in  the  shape  of  a  "valid'^  pretext  first,  and  then 
Machiavel  would  have  gone  to  work  to  prove  his  case,  which  is  easy 
enough  when  one  has  the  necessary  diplomatic  talent. 

The  fervor  of  the  militaristic  Alldeutschen  was  still  unbounded,  when 
the  German  government  acquiesced  into  the  proposal  of  Mr.  Bryan,  at 
which  by  the  way,  some  of  the  chauvinists  did  not  mind  sticking  up  their 
noses.  Though  the  trench  outlook  in  Flanders  and  France,  where  men  were 
being  led  into  death  like  sheep  every  day,  was  not  good,  the  prospects  in 


WHAT  MACHIAVEL  WOULD  HAVE  DONE  287 

the  Carpathians  not  very  promising;  though  Russia  was  getting  second 
breath,  and  with  things  in  Turkey  very  uncertain,  this  plague  of  a  people 
was  still  howling  vociferously.  The  press  being  also  in  a  jingo  mood,  the 
refusal  of  the  Entente  to  consider  the  proposal  of  the  United  States  was 
received  with  much  indifference.    The  War  would  be  over  soon ! 

Toward  the  end  of  April,  1915,  it  was  already  clear  to  many  in  Central 
Europe  that  Italy  would  before  long  have  to  be  counted  as  an  active  enemy 
instead  of  an  unreliable  ally.  Despite  that,  the  German  government  and 
the  Admiralty  found  the  courage  to  send  out  a  submarine  to  waylay  the 
"Lusitania."  The  fact  that  complaints  had  already  been  made  then  that  this 
Leviathan  was  in  the  habit  of  sailing  under  the  United  States  flag  while  in 
dangerous  waters,  proves  at  least  that  she  had  been  watched.  The  inference 
may  be  made  that  for  a  time  the  German  submarine  commanders  had 
orders  not  to  attack  the  vessel.  If  it  could  be  asserted  in  all  good  faith 
by  submarine  commanders  that  the  ship  was  flying,  the  Stars  and  Stripes, 
she  could  have  been  sunk.*  It  is  hard  to  see  in  fact  how  she  could  have 
escaped. 

At  the  end  of  April,  then,  somebody  decided  that  the  "Lusitania"  was 
to  be  made  a  horrible  example.  Whether  it  was  Great- Admiral  von.Tirpitz 
who  issued  the  order,  or  whether  it  was  some  other  person  does  not 
matter  now.  At  any  rate  it  is  certain  that  no  one  individual  decided  to 
shoulder  all  responsibility  himself.  On  the  other  hand  some  credence  may 
be  given  the  claims  that  it  was  not  intended  to  sink  the  vessel.  Be  that  as 
it  may,  the  attack  on  the  ship  was  in  itself  the  most  foolish  of  political 
moves.  So  much  shipping  was  still  going  in  and  out  of  British  ports  that  the 
tonnage  of  the  "Lusitania"  was  a  veritable  trifle.  But  even  if  her  cargo 
had  been  the  most  important  and  largest  which  left  an  American  port  at 
that  time,  the  act  of  attacking  the  ship  was  still  unjustifiable  from  the 
political  standpoint.  Those  responsible  for  this  reprehensible  undertaking 
must  have  lacked  all  foresight.  The  German  government  had  been  warned 
that  the  loss  of  American  ships  and  lives  would  lead  to  unpleasant  situations, 
and  it  was  but  reasonable  to  assume  that  this  ship  of  all  others  would  have 
a  large  American  passenger  list,  and  that  many  of  these  would  be  persons 
of  some  prominence. 

It  is  hard  to  understand  how  any  government,  however  determined  to 
win  a  war,  could  have  placed  at  so  high  -a  value  its  own  proclamation 
concerning  the  establishment  of  a  War  Zone  on  paper,  which  had  already 
been  protested  by  a  government  traditionally  committed  to  "free  ships, 
free  goods."     It  is  hard  to  understand,  moreover,  how  any  government 

*  Flying  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  however,  was  not  the  reason  why  the  "I<usitania"  was  sunk. 
She  was  torpedoed  by  the  Germans  for  the  reason  set  forth  by  Lord  Mersey,  chairman  of  the 
Court  of  Enquiry  into  the  sinking  of  the   "lyusitania.."   in  the  words: 

"The  5,000  cases  of  ammunition  on  board  were  fifty  yards  away  from  where  the  torpedo 
struck  the  ship." — (Glasgow  Evening  Citizen,  July   17th,   1915.) 


288  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

could  have  risked  so  much  at  a  single  throw.  That  government  had 
also  to  consider  that  the  means  of  its  blockade,  the  submarine,  had  no 
standing  whatsoever  in  the  rules  of  "visit  and  search,"  this  for  the  very 
simple  reason  that  in  tactical  respects  it  was  not  the  equal  of  the  smallest 
tramp,  the  bow  of  which  could  cut  the  hull  of  the  "U"  boat  in  two. 

One  must  wonder  how  the  men  in  Berlin  had  pictured  to  themselves 
the  situation  in  the  United  States.  The  only  feasible  explanation,  in  the 
absence  of  information  on  the  subject  is,  that  the  German  government  and 
Admiralty  took  it  for  granted  that  the  tone  of  some  of  the  notes  sent  to 
the  Entente  governments  by  the  Department  of  State  seemed  really  sharper 
than  it  was.*  Men  who  are  anxious  to  believe  a  thing  will  believe  it, 
despite  every  discouragement.  In  that  frame  of  mind  adverse  circumstantial 
evidence  is  underrated  and  the  favorable  thing  in  hand  examined  miscro- 
scopically,  with  the  result  that  it  is  magnified  a  thousand  times. 

One  of  the  results  of  the  sinking  of  the  "Lusitania"  was  the  arming 
of  the  British  merchant  marine.  That  this  would  have  been  done  anyway 
before  very  long  is  certain.  But  Great  Britain  might  not  have  fotmd  it 
so  easy  to  make  her  arguments  weighty  had  it  not  been  that  the  "Lusitania" 
case  recommended  a  lenient  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  government  of  the 
United  States.  The  contentions  on  this  and  that  side,  in  regard  to  caliber 
of  guns,  and  their  location  aboard,  are  hardly  worth  attention.  Great 
Britain  was  arming  her  ships  for  their  protection,  and  there  was  no 
assurance  worthy  of  the  name  that  a  gun  barbetted  aft  could  not  be 
shifted  forward  once  the  ship  was  out  of  a  neutral  port.  At  any  rate 
from  that  moment  onward  the  situation  of  'submarine  versus  supramarine 
warfare'  on  merchant  shipping  was  and  remained  critical.  On  September 
1st,  1915,  the  German  government  instructed  Count  Bernstorflf  to  say: 
"Liners  will  not  be  sunk  by  our  submarines  without  warning 

and  without  safety  of  the  lives  of  noncombatants,  provided  that 

the  liners  do  not  try  to  escape  or  offer  resistance." 

A  Diplomatic  Splitting  of  Hairs 

Meanwhile  the  sinking  of  the  "Arabic"  had  demonstrated  what  the 
new  international  political  danger,  submarine  against  armed  merchant  ves- 
sel, would  lead  to,  and  the  many  attempts  on  the  part  of  the  German 
government  to  induce  the  government  of  the  United  States  to  view 
analytically  this  latest  departure  in  sea  law  in  war  did  not  lead  to  anything. 
The  Berlin  government  offered  to  arbitrate  the  "Arabic"  case,  but  decided 
to  "pay  an  indemnity  for  the  American  lives  which  to  its  deep  regret  have 
been  lost  on  the  'Arabic'  " 


•  An  English  editor  of  prominence  has  since  then  explained  on  a  lecture  platform  in  New 
York  City  that  the  British  government  knew  that  the  tone  of  the  notes  of  the  U.  S.  Department 
of  State  was  artificial. 


A  DIPLOMATIC  SPLITTING  OF  HAIRS  289 

The  case  of  the  "William  P.  Frye,"  that  of  the  "Hesperian"  and  the 
conduct  of  Dr.  Dumba,  the  Austro-Hungarian  ambassador,  had  meanwhile 
aggravated  the  general  situation  in  the  United  States.  Notwithstanding 
this,  the  government  of  the  United  States  sent,  on  October  21st,  to  the 
British  government  the  strongest  note  it  was  ever  to  get,  that  in  which 
Great  Britain's  substitution  of  her  own  volition  for  International  Law  was 
characterized  as  "ineffective,  illegal  and  indefensible." 

The  German  government  continued  its  diplomatic  fight  against  the 
arming  of  merchant  men.  The  fact  that  it  had  the  edicts  in  that  regard 
of  International  Law  on  its  side  helped  no  longer,  of  course.  The  world 
had  long  passed  out  of  the  reign  of  international  morality,  and  if  the 
Germans  could  not  see  this  it  was  due  largely  to  the  fact  that  they  saw 
only  the  faults  of  their  enemies  and  their  enemies'  sympathizers,  but  not 
their  own. 

Some  months  before  that,  Mr.  Bryan  had  in  a  letter  to  William  J. 
Stone,  chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  defined 
very  aptly  what  the  position  of  the  United  States  government  was.  A 
part  of  the  press  had  accused  the  government  of  having  shown  partiality 
to  the  Entente  governments  as  against  the  Central  Powers.  Mr.  Bryan  was 
able  to  refute  all  of  the  charges  that  had  been  made,  and  in  conclusion 
said: 

"If  any  American  citizens,  partisans  of  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary,  feel  that  this  administration  is  acting  in  a  way  injurious 
to  the  cause  of  these  countries,  this  feeling  results  from  the  fact 
that  on  the  high  seas  the  German  and  Austro-Hungarian  naval 
power  is  thus  far  inferior  to  the  British.  It  is  the  business  of  a 
belligerent  operating  on  the  high  seas,  not  the  duty  of  a  neutral, 
to  prevent  contraband  from  reaching  the  enemy.  Those  in  this 
country  who  sympathize  with  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary 
appear  to  asume  that  some  obligation  rests  upon  this  government 
in  the  performance  of  its  neutral  duty  to  prevent  all  trade  in  con- 
traband, and  thus  to  equalize  the  difference  due  to  the  relative 
naval  strength  of  the  belligerents.  No  such  obligation  exists; 
it  would  be  an  unneutral  act,  an  act  of  partiality  on  the  part  of  this 
Government  to  adopt  such  a  policy  if  the  Executive  had  the 
power  to  do  so.  .  .  .  The  markets  of  this  country  are  open 
upon  equal  terms  to  all  the  world,  to  every  nation,  belligerent  or 
neutral." 

Such  indeed  was  the  case.  The  attitude  of  Mr.  Bryan  was  far  from 
that  of  Mr.  Jefferson,  whose  view  on  neutrality  was  more  a  moral  than 
a  technical  matter,  which,  even  in  his  times  did  not  find  universal  approval 
by  any  means — might  have  found  none  at  all  had  it  not  been  that  the 
Revolution  and  the  participation  therein  of  some  Frenchmen  had  been 
too  recent  to  make  any  other  attitude  popular.    The  political  situation  of 


290  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

then  made  the  United  States  government  toward  France  a  friendly  neutral, 
while  the  state  of  affairs  during  the  European  War  caused  that  same 
government  to  follow  a  neutrality  that  was  legally  correct,  but  otherwise 
pro-British. 

There  was  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  pursue  the  best  course,  after 
the  government  of  the  United  States  had  failed  to  take  a  firm  stand  when 
the  British  government  set  aside,  at  leisure  and  with  design,  every  rule 
of  Maritime  Law  as  pronounced  by  International  Law,  and  defined  by 
the  Declarations  of  Paris  and  London.  Maritime  Law  was  in  flux,  and 
the  Orders  in  Privy  Council  placed  upon  its  poor  and  flayed  verbiage 
whatever  interpretation  seemed  desirable,  setting  aside  whole  Articles  and 
interpolating  whatever  it  pleased,  so  that  the  Declaration  of  London  was 
indeed  become  a  series  of  **The  Declaration  of  London  Orders  in  Council." 
To  have  permitted  this,  in  face  of  its  staunch  support  in  the  past 
of  the  "free  ships  make  free  goods"  principle,  is  of  no  credit  to  the 
administration  of  Mr.  Wilson.  This  sin  of  omission  encouraged  banditry 
on  the  high  sea,  and  piracy  under  it.  It  also  gave  the  affairs  of  the  world — 
mankind — a  turn  from  which  it  will  need  many  a  decade  to  recover.  That 
the  German  government,  composed  of  men  who  had  grown  up  in  the 
atmosphere  of  bureaucracism,  interpreted  this  failure  as  a  proof  of  weakness 
on  the  one  hand,  and  an  unfriendly  act,  on  the  other,  should  not  surprise  us. 

The  Handicaps  of  German  Diplomacy 

We  may  well  doubt  that  any  other  set  of  diplomatists  and  officials 
would  have  seen  the  situation  in  a  different  light.*  As  a  matter  of  fact 
the  diplomatic  conduct  of  the  British  government  was  no  better,  but  it 
was  backed  by  the  fact  that  the  British  public  had  in  the  governing  and 
possessing  classes  and  in  the  government  of  the  United  States  many  staunch 
supporters,  while  the  German  public  had  in  the  country  only  some  un- 
organized and  dollar-chasing  race-fellows  of  far  less  importance  than  they 
themselves  could  believe.  The  German  in  the  United  States  had  indeed 
contributed  his  share  to  the  upbuilding  of  the  country,  but  so  had  the 
racial  relatives  of  the  other  belligerents.  In  a  majority-run  country,  there- 
fore, they  could  but  expect  the  inevitable — the  ultima  ratio  that  is  the 
lot  of  the  weaker. 

For  the  German  government  it  may  be  said  that  it  never  fooled  itself 
on  the  position  of  the  Germans  in  the  United  States.  But  that  was  an 
odd  sort  of  enlightenment.  It  did  not  spring  from  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  conditions  across  the  Atlantic,  but  from  the  disdain  in  which  it  held 
all  those  who  had  sought  respite  from  the  burdens  of  militarism  at  home. 

*  See  "The  Pitfalls  of  Diplomacy"  in  Appendix. 


THE  HANDICAPS  OF  GERMAN  DIPLOMACY  291 

I  do  not  wish  to  appear  facetious  when  I  say  that  this  was  the  only 
subject  on  which  the  men  in  BerHn  were  well  informed.  How  rightly 
they  were  informed  is  another  matter,  of  course.  If  that  wonderful 
espionage  service  of  the  Germans  really  existed,  it  must  have  been  an 
institution  in  which  employment  was  dependent  upon  one's  negative  quali- 
fications. 

In  considering  these  things  we  must  not  overlook  that  in  whatever 
German  diplomacy  attempted  it  was  handicapped  also  from  without.  The 
prestige  of  Great  Britain,  the  power  of  Russia,  and  the  privileged  position 
of  France,  were  all  matters  against  which  the  German  government  and 
its  diplomatic  agents  found  it  hard  to  argue  effectively.  The  Triple 
Entente  had  enlisted  the  sympathies  of  Europe,  and  to  a  large  extent  the 
world,  and  Germany,  as  leading  member  of  a  decrepit  alliance,  as  a  state 
that  was  making  itself  felt  as  competitor,  the  head  of  whose  government 
was  a  man  given  to  impetuousness  and  oratorical  indiscretions — a  nation 
whose  chauvinists  saw  their  ideals  realizable  only  by  the  application  of 
force — was  hardly  fitted  to  upset  this  scheme. 

Already  the  control  of  the  world's  news  channels  gave  Great  Britain 
in  times  of  peace  the  opportunity  and  means  to  disseminate  of  German 
"news"  only  the  worst,  and  when  it  was  clear  to  the  British  that  there  was 
to  be  no  understanding  on  the  Two  Power  Standard  in  naval  armament  they 
inaugurated  a  campaign  of  anti-German  propaganda  the  like  of  which  had 
not  been  seen  before.  The  "German  Peril"  became  a  world  slogan.  The 
childish  babbling  of  the  emperor,  whose  forensic  effusions  dealt  hardly 
ever  with  anything  but  the  "shining  armor  and  the  trusty  sword,"  the 
wild  incantations  of  the  Alldeutschen  to  their  new  Wotan  in  the  Walhalla 
of  Pan-Germanism,  the  native  idiosyncracies  of  the  German  people — all 
these  were  things  which  the  British  press  and  its  agencies  peddled 
throughout  the  world.  This  world  came  to  know  the  German  as  a  rather 
stupid,  beefy  caricature  addicted  to  beer  and  a  pipe,  when  it  did  not  see  him 
in  Anglo-Saxon  literature  as  a  crafty  though  ill-mannered,  intriguant, 
buying  forever  the  secrets  of  other  governments. 

Against  that  sort  of  military  preparedness  the  best  diplomacy  is 
impotent.  While  the  government  of  a  country  may  remain  polite  enough 
in  such  campaigns,  and  while  the  populace  at  first  may  find  such  extrav- 
agances no  more  than  amusing,  both  come  to  assimilate  them  ultimately 
in  the  manner  the  promoter  of  them  intended.  For  a  new  twist  of  public 
opinion  such  things  are  the  foundation.  Anything  that  will  create  and 
foster  the  impression  that  one  people  is  the  superior  of  the  other  will  find 
a  warm  reception  with  the  masses  whose  vanity  is  appealed  to.  That  later 
on  this  vanity,  like  all  others,  will  have  to  be  paid  for,  occurs  to  but  a  few. 

An  able  government  would  have  paid  more  attention  to  such  things. 


292  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

But  the  German  government  was  not  an  able  one.  In  that  lies  the  answer. 
Its  diplomatic  representatives  were  quite  satisfied  when  their  own  social 
standing"  was  well  launched,  and  since  on  the  whole  they  were  rather 
"charming  fellows"  that  matter  was  quickly  attended  to.  The  German 
chef  de  mission,  though  usually  an  accomplished  linguist,  did  what  most 
other  men  of  his  class  do :  He  read  only  that  part  of  the  newspaper  which 
the  clerk  or  secretary  in  charge  of  that  department,  digested  into  a  sort  of 
literary  review  every  day.  The  opinions  of  diplomatic  secretaries  are 
none  too  highly  valued  by  their  chiefs,  and  thus  it  came  about  that  the 
German  diplomatic  agents  had  each  his  little  Chinese  wall,  exact  replica 
of  the  great  mental  circumvallation  in  which  labored  the  government  at 
Berlin. 

That  interesting  state  of  affairs  brought  on  the  following  conditions. 
Before  the  Great  War  was  over,  Germany  and  her  puny  allies,  had  against 
them  the  entire  civilized  world,  some  small  states,  between  the  upper  and 
nether  grindstones,  duly  excepted.  A  picture  of  that  is  given  in  the  table 
below : 

Population  National      Popul.  Number 

at  Home  Area  Wealth  in  Colonies  Area  of  Military 

(millions)      (sq.  miles)       (billions)  (millions)        (sq.  miles)  Effectives 

British  Empire..  46.2  121,331  $69.2  399.6     13,505,481  5,500,000 

Russian  Empire.  145.8  1,996,743  65.5  31.5       6,650,914  9,700,000 

French  Empire..  39.8  207,509  58.2  48.0      4,836,032  5,400,000 

Serbia 4.7  34,000  4.5     510,000 

Belgium 7.6  11,373  8.2  15.0         900,000  500,000* 

Japan  53.8  147,655  42.5  20.5          110,611  5,800,OOOt 

Italy 36.4  110,623  22.5  1.9         596,000  3,800,000 

Portugal 6.2  35,490  6.5  9.6         832,267  540,000$ 

Rumania 7.8  54,000  5.7     680,000 

United  States...  103.0  3,616,484  190.5  10.3         125,344  5,500,000§ 


Totals   ....451.3  6,345,208  473.3  536.4    27,566,649  37,930,000 

German  Empire.  66.9  208,780  83.2  14.1       1,027,820    7,400,000 

Austria-Hungary  52.0  260,034  55.5     5,400,000 

Ottoman  Empire  21.8  710,224  11.3     1,740,000 

Bulgaria 5.1  43,000  3.9     600,000 


Totals    ....li^5.8     1,222,038     153.9      14.1       1,027,820  15,140,000 


•  Partial  mobilization. 

t  Inactive. 

t  Partial   participation. 

§  Number  mobilized  at  end  of  war. 


THE  HANDICAPS  OF  GERMAN  DIPLOMACY  293 

Against  such  odds  the  German  army  and  the  forces  allied  with  it 
could  not  prevail,  of  course.  For  all  that  the  Great  War  lasted  over  four 
years,  and  cost  7,254,000  lives,  and  in  direct  war  expenditures  the  great 
sum  of  $200,000,000,000,  while  the  indirect  losses  to  all  involved  have 
been  estimated  at  $250,000,000,000,  or  about  $450,000,000,000  in  all— a 
rather  costly  enterprise  this  breaking  up  of  the  world's  greatest  military 
machine.  The  large  sum  of  $29,722  had  been  spent  in  the  maintenance 
of  each  Central  powers  group  soldier,  and  in  opposing  him,  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  the  economic  losses  included  in  this  sum,  before  The  Great 
War  was  a  thing  of  the  past.  In  other  words,  it  cost  mankind  that  much 
to  render  innocuous  each  man  in  the  Centralist  camp. 

Since  the  combined  national  wealth  of  the  states  at  war  was  only 
$627.2  billions  at  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War,  not  so  much  was 
left  when  finally  the  Germans  agreed  to  an  armistice. 

The  display  of  military  and  economic  strength  and  efficiency  of  the 
Germans  was  truly  phenomenal.  To  almost  the  very  last  moment  they  were 
successful  against  forces  that  were  their  superior  numerically  as  two  to 
one,  and  which  for  their  munitions  and  supplies  had  the  world  for  their 
arsenal  and  base.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  British  blockade,  Germany  would 
have  won  the  War. 

The  "Declaration  of  London  Orders  in  Council,"  sophistical  as  they 
will  seem  to  the  historian,  and  the  future  writers  on  International  Law, 
had,  from  the  point  of  view  of  British  public  interest,  their  absolute 
justification  in  the  fact  that  without  them  the  German  army  could  not  have 
been  beaten.  To  lay  all  Central  Europe  in  a  state  of  siege  was  the  direct 
purpose  of  the  Orders  in  Privy  Council,  and  in  this  they  were  eflFective, 
because  the  neutral  governments  had  at  first  not  the  inclination,  later  not 
the  courage,  and  still  later  not  the  incentive  to  insist  that,  according  to  the 
genuine  Declaration  of  London,  and  the  agreements  on  Maritime  Law 
in  Paris,  1856,  "free  ships  make  free  goods,"  which  was  already  the 
notion  held  by  Thomas  Jefferson,  though  he  expressed  it  in  terms  of 
neutrality  as  a  moral  conception.  The  London  Orders  in  Privy  Council 
were  further  the  agent  that  brought  the  United  States  into  the  War. 

In  Diplomacy  Might  Is  Right 

There  are  those  who  have  criticized  adversely  such  statesmen  as  have 
in  the  past  defended  the  proposition  that  might  is  right.  The  British 
government  has  never  admitted  that  its  policy  of  expansion  was  in  any 
manner  tainted  by  that.  Yet  one  has  but  to  inquire  into  the  acquisition 
of  the  units  of  the  vast  British  domain  to  see  that  conquest  and  annexation 
were  the  principal  factors  in  its  growth.    As  late  back  as  1902  the  British 


294  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

government  snuffed  out  the  lives  of  two  small  republics  in  South  Africa, 
and  did  that  in  the  most  ruthless  manner.  The  concentration  camps  of 
General  Weyler,  in  Cuba,  were  hardly  less  the  graveyard  of  a  people's 
spirit  than  were  the  iniquitous  institutions  of  the  same  name,  which  the 
late  Lord  Kitchener,  with  astounding  cynicism,  conducted  on  the  South 
African  veld,  until  26,000  Boer  women  and  children  had  been  done  to 
death,  by  absence  of  sanitation  and  lack  of  proper  food. 

Filth  and  famine  have  ever  been  a  potent  ally  of  the  British,  and  the 
German  government  knew  that.  Against  these  means  of  war  it  felt 
called  upon  to  employ  its  steel  sharks  of  the  deep,  and  had  it  been  possible 
to  do  that  without  endangering  the  interests  of  the  neutrals,  the  world 
might  not  have  been  so  full  of  indignation  as  it  was. 

As  between  two  law  breakers  the  neutral  public  could  well  afford  to 
remain  the  spectator,  as  Holland,  Switzerland,  Denmark,  Sweden,  Norway 
and  Spain  did  to  the  very  last,  because  they  knew  that  the  protestations 
made  in  London  were  not  one  whit  better  than  those  that  came  from 
Berlin.  There  is  nothing  like  knowing  one's  neighbors  by  the  washing 
they  hang  in  the  backyard,  and  in  the  capitals  of  the  neutrals  mentioned 
the  British  brand  was  as  well  known  as  the  German,  the  sole  reason  why 
Mr.  Wilson's  appeal  to  the  neutrals  of  Europe  in  the  spring  of  1917  found 
not  the  least  response,  and  why  American  propaganda  among  them  remained 
ineffective. 

Spain  knew  Great  Britain  too  well  to  do  anything  in  her  favor  that 
was  not  immediately  a  question  of  export  balance,  and  with  the  French 
government  the  Spaniard  dealt  in  the  experience  gained  in  Morocco.  Those 
who  believe  that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  had  much  to  do  with  Spain's 
attitude  must  be  counted  among  those  who  know  much  because  they  have 
learned  so  little.  It  was  Gibraltar  and  the  loss  of  a  vast  colonial  empire 
which  made  the  Spanish  averse  to  anything  promotive  of  Anglo-Saxon 
interests. 

In  the  Wilhelmstrasse  these  things  were  not  overlooked,  of  course. 
But  they  were  given  a  false  value.  As  said  before,  adverse  circumstantial 
evidence  was  not  properly  weighed,  and  favorable  testimony  was  magnified. 
When  a  government  becomes  the  victim  of  the  mania  of  making  the  wish 
father  of  the  thought,  and  its  own  necessities  the  mother,  the  state  is  not 
far  from  debacle,  as  events  in  Germany  have  demonstrated. 

The  German  government  was  expert  enough  in  military  matters  to 
know  that  its  army  was  by  far  the  best  of  any,  it  was  efficient  enough  to 
feel  that  the  country's  economic  resources  could  be  stretched,  but  it  was 
not  perspicacious  enough  to  so  shape  its  conduct  that  there  would  come 
within  view  of  army  and  population  the  end  of  the  War.  Had  it  been 
competent   in  that  respect   it   would   have   done  what  it   did   not   do — 


IN  DIPLOMACY  MIGHT  IS  RIGHT  295 

exercise  every  effort  to  keep  the  United  States  out  of  the  Great  War,  in 
which  case  the  Central  Powers  would  have  been  victorious.  That  this 
was  difficult  must  be  admitted,  but  it  still  seemed  possible  at  one  time.* 

Not  to  resume  unlimited  warfare  on  merchant  ships  with  the  submarine 
was  for  Germany  to  sacrifice  a  great  military  advantage.  Of  that  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  On  the  other  hand,  the  political  factors  were  such  that 
they  could  not  be  overlooked.  Behind  those  political  factors  stood  the 
power  of  the  United  States.  But  the  Berlin  skeptics  who  doubted  that 
this  would  be  turned  against  them,  who  in  the  unprepared ness  of  the 
United  States  saw  a  handicap  great  enough  to  prevent  active  participation 
by  American  forces  in  the  Great  War,  had  seemingly  forgotten  that 
there  was  ever  such  a  thing  as  the  Civil  War.  That  these  men  had  indeed 
some  foundation  for  their  optimism  must  not  be  denied.  In  the  presidential 
campaign  of  1916  "He  kept  us  out  of  the  War"  had  been  the  general 
slogan  of  one  faction,  but  it  was  overlooked  that  the  other  faction,  which 
did  not  have  this  cry,  was  able  for  a  few  hours  to  claim  the  election,  so 
close  was  the  result  of  the  ballots  cast  for  and  against  participation  in  the 
Great  War,  for  such  was  the  true  import  of  the  campaign. 

But  with  the  immediate  aspect  and  nature  of  a  situation  no  competent 
government  will  busy  itself  too  much.  It  is  the  ultimate  of  a  crisis  that 
is  kept  in  view  by  the  statesman,  for  which  reason  he  may  be  described  as 
a  politician  who  today  can  do  that  which  twenty  years  hence  he  need  not 
regret.  Of  such  men  German  statecraft  and  diplomacy  had  none.  Hence 
the  steps  which  led  to  the  accession  in  the  camp  of  the  Allies  of  the  moral, 
material  and  military  resources  of  the  United  States. 


*  Though  testimony  given  by  Mr.  Wilson  himself  would  seem  to  deny  this,  it  may  be 
doubted  that  even  he  could  have  carried  so  completely  off  its  feet  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  as  to  make  war  with  Germany  absolutely  inevitable. — Note  made  on  January  20.  1920. 


XIV 

THE  VIENNA  VIEWPOINT 

WHILE  the  unreasonable  terms  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  ulti- 
matum to  Serbia  were  directly  responsible  for  the  crisis  that  led 
to  the  European  War  it  was  not  the  intention  of  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  government  to  bring  on  the  catastrophe  which  ensued.  By  and 
large  that  government  had  for  a  long  time  been  in  the  habit  of  doing  as 
it  pleased  in  the  Balkans,  and,  for  a  time,  in  what  later  became  Rumania. 
That  habit  had  been  acquired  in  dealing  with  the  Turks. 

The  emperors  of  Serbia  had  been  able  to  maintain  the  rivers  Danube 
and  Sava  as  their  border  towards  Austria  and  Hungary,  the  first  of  which 
was  then  Germany  proper,  but  their  successors  were  not  able  to  do  this. 
Already  in  1640  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Albania  passed  under  the 
protection  of  the  Austrian  emperors,  and  it  was  largely  due  to  the  efforts 
of  the  Austrian-Hungarian  government  that  Albania,  in  1913,  was  made 
an  independent  principality  under  Prince  William  of  Wied. 

Serbia  had  passed  completely  under  the  Turks  in  1459,  when  the 
capital,  then  Semendria,  was  taken.  This  accomplished,  the  Turks  invaded 
the  remainder  of  Hungary,  beat  back  the  Austrian  forces  and  laid  siege 
to  Vienna.  From  then  on,  war  by  the  Austrians  and  their  allies 
against  the  Turks  continued  to  be  the  order  of  the  day.  In  1717,  Prince 
Eugene,  the  famous,  succeeded  in  taking  Belgrade,  and  from  1718  to 
1739  northern  parts  of  Serbia  were  Austrian  territory.  During  the  first 
decade  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  the  Serbs  finally  gained  their  independ- 
ence, though  as  yet  that  was  to  be  enjoyed  only  under  Russian  and 
Turkish  protection.  In  1882  Serbia  was  again  a  kingdom  and  under  the 
Obrenovitch  kings  the  traditional  relations  of  friendship  between  Austria- 
Hungary  and  Serbia  were  carefully  fostered  by  both.  So  far  did  these 
relations  go  that  King  Milan,  and  his  successor,  Alexander  I,  were  allowed 
a  sort  of  pin-money  by  the  Austrians,  King  Peter,  of  the  Karageorgievitch 
family,  deciding  later  to  take  such  an  allowance  from  the  Russian  crown. 
That,  however,  was  not  entirely  his  own  choice.  The  Austro-Hungarian 
government  was  under  the  impression  that  Alexander  and  Draga  had  been 
murdered  at  the  instigation  of  the  Karageorgievitches,  and  decided  to  turn 
its  back  upon  them,  which  it  did,  having  in  this  the  hearty  approval  of 
the  British  government,  which  was  the  last  to  recognize  King  Peter. 

2% 


THE  VIENNA  VIEWPOINT  297 

Since  I  have  already  mentioned  in  a  previous  chapter  that  Austria 
did  for  a  time  occupy  itself  with  the  affairs  of  Rumania,  I  need  not  go  into 
that  subject  again  here.  The  fact  is  that  Austria-Hungary  had  had  a  free 
hand  in  the  Balkans,  though  now  and  then  Russian  influence  was  in  the 
lead  in  the  eastern  parts  of  the  peninsula.  The  Turks  had  been  driven  back, 
and  the  Austrian  armies  did  much  to  get  them  into  motion  southward  and 
eastward. 

This  was  recognized  by  the  Congress  of  Berlin,  1878,  giving  Austria- 
Hungary  a  protectorate  over  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  which  in  1908, 
resulted  in  complete  annexation,  in  the  manner  already  gone  into.  Count 
Aehrenthal,  then  the  Austrian  minister  of  the  exterior,  was  a  rather 
ambitious  man,  and  labored  besides  under  the  misfortune  of  being  some- 
what of  a  Serbophobe,  a  circumstance  which  opened  anew  the  door  in  the 
Balkans  to  Russian  intrigue  with  a  view  of  getting  to  Constantinople 
over  land,  the  "Concert  of  Europe"  discountenancing  still  advance  across 
the  Black  Sea.  His  policies  were  continued  by  Count  Berchtold,  who  suc- 
ceeded him  in  office,  the  man  who  was  the  accomplice  in  the  sharp  deal 
with  Isvolski.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  Count  Berchtold  was  the  only 
one  who  objected  strenuously  to  the  further  strengthening  of  Serbia,  which 
Sazonoff  engineered  by  the  terms  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  at  the  expense 
of  Bulgaria. 

Diplomacy  Versus  National  Fact 

While  the  tariff  discriminations  against  Serbia  were  intended  to  bene- 
fit especially  the  Hungarian  landowners  and  farmers,  the  measure  was  also 
designed  to  discipline  the  Serbs,  and  above  all  their  government.  King 
Peter  continued  to  remain  in  bad  odor  in  Vienna  and  Budapest.  That  he 
was  a  regicide  could  not  be  charged  officially,  but  the  Austrian  government 
proceeded  from  that  basis  in  all  its  dealings  with  the  Serbian  government. 

This,  then,  explains  the  peremptory  tone  of  the  ultimatum.  The  men 
in  Vienna  would  not  concede  that  they  were  dealing  with  an  equal  and 
a  sovereign  state. 

But  there  was  also  another  reason.  The  Serbs  had  hoped  that,  soon 
or  late,  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  which  before  the  rule  of  the  Turk  had 
been  a  part  of  the  Serbian  empire,  would  be  joined  to  their  country.  The 
annexation  of  the  two  districts,  with  some  two  millions  of  Croats,  by 
Austria-Hungary,  in  1908,  put  an  end  to  this  hope.  Its  place  was  taken 
by  the  movement  which  today  is  known  as  Jugo-Slav. 

By  means  of  propaganda,  industriously  supported  by  the  Russian  govern- 
ment, the  attempt  was  made  to  make  the  South-Slavs  of  the  Dual  Monarchy 
eager  for  incorporation  into  Serbia.  That  at  least  was  the  objective,  though, 
naturally,  the  thing  was  given  a  different  name.    The  fact  is  that  religion 


298  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

divided  the  two  families  of  Slavs.  The  Croats  in  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina 
are  Roman  Catholics  for  the  greater  part,  and  Mohammedans,  while  the 
Serbs  subscribe  to  the  Greek  Orthodox  faith.  In  a  country  like  the  Balkan 
that  means  more  than  it  does  in  other  parts.  Intellectually  these  people 
are  in  the  days  of  the  Reformation,  and  since  religion  is  to  most  of  them 
the  principal  impetus  to  mental  life,  violent  prejudices  founded  on  it  are 
the  inevitable  result. 

It  is  quite  a  common  trick  for  governments  to  impose  economic  burdens 
and  handicaps  upon  a  state  or  people  they  later  wish  to  annex.  The  Austrian 
government,  though  in  this  case  Hungarians  were  the  principal  offenders- 
Count  Berchtold,  despite  his  German  name,  being  one  of  them — ^had  realized 
that  Jugo-Slavism  was  one  of  the  facts  of  the  day. 

The  empire  had  the  reputation  that  it  was  on  the  verge  of  disintegration 
and  it  was  feared  that  it  could  hardly  stand  trouble  from  that  quarter.  It 
was  later  proven  that,  as  in  the  case  of  Mark  Twain,  the  obituary  notices 
were  a  little  premature,  but  that  could  not  deter  the  Austrian  government 
from  doing  what  seemed  logical  under  the  circumstances. 

The  total  annexation  of  Serbia  was  not  intended,  so  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  ascertain,  but  a  humbling  into  the  dust  of  the  Jugo- Slavism- 
promoting  government  in  Belgrade  was  the  program.  The  terms  of  the 
ultimatum  were  chosen  with  that  in  view.  That  they  were  not  accepted 
was  due  entirely  to  Sazonoff.  Before  the  Serbian  government  decided  upon 
the  course  it  was  to  take,  the  Russian  minister  of  foreign  affairs  was  con- 
sulted, and  when  he  declared  his  readiness  to  stand  by  Serbia  in  any  event 
compliance  with  the  ultimatum  was  refused. 

The  Austrian  government,  as  has  been  noted,  waited  a  full  three  weeks 
after  the  assassination  of  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand  before  it  made  up 
its  mind  to  send  the  ultimatum,  and  with  the  ink  still  wet  on  it.  Count 
Berchtold  decided  to  continue  his  summering.  It  is  entirely  out  of  the 
question  that  he  did  not  consult  the  German  government  in  the  matter, 
and  that  Berlin  had  given  him  a  free  hand,  as  Bethmann-Hollweg  has 
attested.*  It  is  quite  possible  that  to  the  German  chancellor,  who  had  been 
brought  up  in  the  police  service  of  Prussia,  and  who  had  a  police  official's 
mind,  withal,  the  terms  of  the  ultimatum  seemed  perfectly  proper.  The 
case  of  Serbia  seemed  to  call  for  punishment  and  full  power  was  given 
given  the  authority  concerned. 

That  the  murder  of  the  heir  apparent  and  his  wife  was  the  spark  that 
set  off  the  mine  which  double-dealing  diplomacy  had  laid  in  Europe,  need 
not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  Serbian  government  would  not  have  fared 

*  This  has  since  been  proven  by  investigations  made  by  the  Ebert  Government.  The  German 
government,  especially  Emperor  William  II,  gave  the  advace  tb^t  Austria  Hungary  should  do 
what  she  did  do.— Date  of  this  note.  January  20.  1920. 


DIPLOMACY  VERSUS  NATIONAL  FACT  299 

better,  had  some  other  "power"  been  the  injured  party.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  protest  the  terms  of  the  ultimatum.  The  fact  is  that  much  less  has 
brought  on  wars  between  nations. 

Since  Great  Britain  had  been  the  last  to  recognize  the  status  of  King 
Peter,  and  since  she  had  made  the  killing  of  an  Englishman  in  Johannes- 
burg, by  a  Boer  policeman,  a  very  important  item  in  her  bill  of  complaints 
against  the  government  of  the  South  African  Republic,  she  might  have  been 
the  last  to  prate  of  arrogant  conduct  and  the  like.  Surely,  even  an  Austrian 
archduke  is  the  equal  of  an  English  commoner.  And  what  difference, 
indeed,  should  it  have  made  to  Great  Britain  if  Austria-Hungary  had 
annexed  Serbia,  since  she  had  only  recently  annexed  the  Transvaal  and 
Orange  Free  State  for  reasons  that  were  alike,  if  we  go  by  pretext. 
Instead  of  all  that,  Sir  Edward  Grey,  coming  valiantly  to  the  rescue  of 
his  friend  and  ally,  M,  Sazonoff,  made  a  mountain  of  a  molehill,  as  such 
things  are  looked  upon  by  and  between  governments  that  have  not  pre- 
meditated to  cut  each  other's  throat. 

But  we  are  looking  at  this  thing  from  the  point  of  view  of  humanity 
— from  the  position  of  self-determination  for  small  peoples,  a  very  noble 
principle  aired  so  much  at  that  time,  but  again  totally  forgotten  now.  There 
is  no  reason  that  I  can  see,  and  I  have  investigated  the  Jugo-Slav  on  the 
spot,  notably  in  and  about  Agram  and  Serajewo,  which  towns  were  the 
hotbeds  of  the  movement  in  Austria-Hungary,  why  the  Serbs,  Croats 
proper,  and  Slovenes  should  not  come  together  if  they  are  so  minded. 

On  the  other  hand,  taking  the  economic  side  of  the  thing,  the  people 
of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  were  better  off  than  they  would  have  been 
under  Serb  rule,  for,  to  say  the  least,  the  Serbian  government  has  always 
been  notorious  for  its  corruption,  ineptness  and  inefficiency.  What  Serbia 
was  before  the  War  she  was  in  spite  of  that  government,  and  by  virtue 
of  the  good  qualities  of  her  people.  In  making  that  statement  I  take  into 
account  the  fact  that  from  the  Balkan  we  can  not  within  reason  expect 
as  yet  too  much.  Its  people  were  but  too  recently  a  subject  race,  to  have 
thrown  off  the  effects  of  that  condition,  and  government  for  the  greater 
part  has  not  as  completely  dissociated  itself  from  the  methods  of  the 
Turkish  valis  and  begs  as    might  be  expected. 

The  Austrian  government  did  consider  the  possibilities  that  might  arise 
so  far  as  Russia  was  concerned.  But  only  a  little  while  before  the  annexa- 
tion of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  and  the  complete  emancipation  of  Bulgaria, 
had  been  accomplished  by  Austria-Hungary  in  the  face  of  much  German 
opposition  without  any  real  interference  from  Russian  quarters.  It  was 
believed  that  the  Russian  government  had  its  hands  too  full  with  internal 
unrest  to  care  whether  or  no  Serbia  was  taken  to  task  for  the  alleged 
complicity  in  the  murder  of  the  archducal  couple. 


300  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

The  revolution  in  Russia  had  never  really  subsided,  and  the  Muscovite 
government  had  to  keep  its  eye  on  it,  as  later  developments  have  shown. 
In  Vienna,  then,  it  was  thought  that  this  would  act  as  a  deterrent,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  building  by  Russia  of  a  great  mileage  of  strategic 
railroads  along  the  borders  of  Galicia  and  in  Poland  was  accepted  through- 
out Central  Europe  as  being  the  sure  sign  that  trouble  was  coming.  So  far 
as  Germany  was  concerned  there  was  the  additional  fact  that  these  railroads 
were  being  built  with  money  raised  in  France. 

In  a  Diplomatic  Cul-de-sac 

But  this  calculation  was  wrong.  Governments  have  ever  found  a 
foreign  war  the  best  antitode  for  revolution,  and  Russia  was  to  find  it 
that.  When  finally  it  became  clear  that  Russia  would  not  consent  to  a 
"localization"  of  the  difficulty  between  Serbia  and  Austria-Hungary,  it 
was  too  late  to  do  anything.  Withdrawal  of  the  ultimatum  would  have 
damaged  the  prestige  of  Austria-Hungary,  and  in  Petrograd,  the  war 
clique — Sazonoff,  Grand  Duke  Nicholai  Nicholaievitch,  Sir  George  Buch- 
anan and  M.  Paleologue,  the  French  ambassador — saw  to  it  that  the  Czar 
negotiated  with  Emperor  William  on  the  basis  of  a  partial  mobilization, 
while  a  complete  one  was  actually  in  progress.  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  M. 
Viviani  were  in  the  meantime  exchanging  compliments  on  the  status  of 
Belgium,  though  that  seemed,  and  must  always  seem,  superfluous  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  both,  Great  Britain  and  France,  were  signatories  to  the 
treaty  which  guaranteed  the  neutrality  of  Belgium,  and  had  at  that  time 
no  reason  to  think  that  Germany,  another  guarantor,  would  violate  that 
pact.  The  men  in  Berlin  were  not  particularly  good  statesmen,  but  they 
were  able  to  think,  and  in  Vienna  they  thought  even  more  rapidly,  if  not 
as  deeply. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  government  loved  public  opinion  as  little  as 
did  the  German,  but  conditions  within  the  realm  had  in  the  course  of  time 
forced  the  study  of  the  public's  mind  upon  the  men  at  the  head  of  affairs. 
With  ten  races  in  the  empire,  and  with  political  antagonism  ever  present 
in  the  Austrian  Reichsrat  and  the  Hungarian  parliament,  that  could  not 
be  different.  Nolens  volens  the  Austrian  government  had  to  take  public 
opinion  into  account.  Now  this,  then  that,  racial  element  had  to  be  placated 
— had  to  be  shown  that  it  was  profitable  to  be  a  part  of  the  Danube 
monarchy. 

To  meet  the  several  irredenta  movements  a  protective  tariff  policy  had 
been  adopted,  by  which,  for  instance,  the  Italian  in  Austria  was  shown  that 
he  could  sell  his  products  to  greater  advantage  in  Austria  than  in  Italy 
so  long  as  he  was  under  the  Austrian  flag.     Even  if  proximity  to  good 


IN  A  DIPLOMATIC  CUL-DB-SAC  301 

markets  had  not  been  an  advantage  in  itself,  he  could  always  count  on 
having  in  his  favor  the  import  duty  which  the  Austrian  government  exacted 
from  the  Italian  producer  across  the  boundary.  The  Austrian  Slavs  were 
similarly  favored,  as  against  the  non-Austrian  Slavs,  as  had  been  shown 
in  the  tariff  discriminations  invoked  against  Serbia.  The  Rumanians  in 
Hungary  enjoyed  like  privileges,  though  the  Magyars  saw  to  it  that  they 
themselves  were  the  chief  beneficiaries.  At  any  rate  the  Rumanian  in  the 
Danube  monarchy  was  able  to  send  his  children  to  school,  if  he  had  a 
mind  to,  and  later  he  was  forced  to  do  that,  which  was  not  the  case  in 
Rumania.  In  Galicia,  Pole  and  Ruthenian  also  had  protection  from  the 
tariff,  and  the  Bohemian,  being  the  most  active  of  the  Austro-Hun- 
garophobes  in  the  monarchy,  had  succeeded  in  building  up,  at  the  expense 
of  his  other  co-nationals,  a  great  and  flourishing  industry — the  best  in  all 
the  land. 

That  this  policy  of  the  Austrian  government  was  not  the  outcome  of 
an  inherent  liberalism  must  be  granted,  yet  it  certainly  was  the  proof  of 
a  broadmindedness,  which  the  German  government  did  not  possess.  In 
Berlin  they  were  still  the  carping  hairsplitters,  when  in  Vienna  and  Buda- 
pest Grosszuegigkeit — enterprise  coupled  with  generosity — was  already 
the  rule. 

In  many  respects  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was  far  better 
then  the  German.  That  the  difference  between  the  two  was  interpreted  in 
Berlin  as  due  to  a  laissez-faire  spirit  need  not  concern  us  too  much.  The 
efficiency  of  the  German  government,  of  which  so  much  has  been  heard, 
and  which  certainly  came  to  the  front  during  the  Great  War,  was  not  so 
much  the  work  of  the  government  as  a  quality  of  the  governed.  In  fact, 
much  of  that  quality  was  stifled  by  the  unreasonable  caste  system  to  which 
the  German  government  seemed  hopelessly  committed.  The  men  in  Berlin, 
being  for  the  most  part  governmental  charlatans  and  political  sophists, 
had  arrogated  unto  themselves  much  that  did  not  belong  to  them.  They 
took  credit  for  the  thoroughness  and  thrift  of  the  people  and  succeeded  in 
giving  the  act  an  aspect  that  fooled  all. 

In  Vienna  that  was  not  done.  The  government  did  have  a  somewhat 
sleepy  look,  to  be  sure.  But  it  had  that  largely  because  nobody  cared  to 
adorn  himself  with  the  feathers  of  the  governed.  There  was  some 
Schlamperei — negligence — as  some  saw  it,  but  when  honestly  examined  this 
neglect  was  nothing  but  an  abstinence  by  the  government  from  mixing  in 
affairs  that  were  not  strictly  administrative. 

Austria-Hungary  came  much  closer  to  the  ideal  in  government  than  did 
Germany,  and  most  other  countries  for  that  matter.  In  the  absolute  this 
ideal  is  the  non-existence  of  government ;  within  the  realm  of  the  practical 
it  is  government  eliminated   from  all   spheres   that  can   be  left   in  the 


302  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

hands  of  the  individual.  In  that  respect  the  two  governments  were  some- 
what antithetical.  Just  as  the  ideal  of  the  social  extremist  is  anarchy,  so 
was  the  ideal  of  the  German  government,  a  monarchic  extremist,  for  the 
total  submergence  of  all  public  activities  and  interests  into  the  ever  rising 
flood  of  government. 

Had  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  enjoyed  the  advantage  of 
dealing  with  a  single  people — a  united  race — it  would  not  have  done  any 
better  than  did  the  German.  The  case  is,  therefore,  not  one  of  govern- 
mental morality  and  virtue,  but  one  of  necessity.  Austrian,  German,  Hun- 
garian, Czech,  Pole,  Ruthenian,  Rumanian,  Italian,  Slovak,  Slovene  and 
Croat  had  each  and  all  their  own  inclinations,  and  since  these  had  to  be 
reconciled  with  one  another,  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  came 
to  be  rather  susceptible  to  public  opinion.  While  it  did  modify  the  opinion 
of  the  several  groups,  individually  and  collectively,  its  own  views  were 
necessarily  affected  also. 

Austro-Hungarian  Diplomacy  Less  Handicapped 

This,  then,  was  the  reason  why  Austro-Hungarian  statecraft  and 
diplomacy  were  in  foreign  questions  much  more  competent  than  the  Ger- 
man brand.  World  public  opinion  was  well  understood  in  the  Vienna 
Ministry  of  the  Exterior,  and  being  well  understood,  it  was  efficiently  met 
and  never  assumed  toward  Austria-Hungary  the  ferocious  attitude  it  took 
in  matters  related  to  Germany.  To  avoid  stating  the  case  one-sidedly  I 
must  add  that  Austria-Hungary  did  not  appear  as  prominently  in  the 
arena  of  war  politics  as  did  Germany,  and  with  her,  Great  Britain  and 
France,  the  two  principal  promoters  of  anti-German  propaganda,  had  no 
particular  quarrel. 

While  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  made  a  great  deal  of  fuss  about  the 
ultimatum  to  Serbia,  he  knew  only  too  well  that  he  had  done  this  for  the 
purpose  of  pleasing  Sazonoff  and  his  ambassador  Benckendorf.  Against 
the  Austrian  government  he  had  nothing,  apart  from  the  fact  that  it  was 
an  ally  of  Germany,  and  France  had  only  too  often  divided  spoils  with  the 
Austrians  in  Italy  to  become  of  a  sudden  a  violent  hereditary  enemy. 

To  the  British  in  fact,  Austria-Hungary  had  been  very  useful  in  the 
past.  She  had  been  one  of  the  means  of  keeping  the  Russians  out  of  the 
Dardanelles.  Having  no  colonies,  Austria-Hungary  came  hardly  in  contact 
with  British  imperialism,  and  the  small  fleet  she  kept  in  the  Adriatic  did 
not  in  any  manner  menace  British  control  of  the  Mediterranean.  So  close 
were  the  two  governments,  especially  during  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria, 
that  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  did  not  mind  exporting  a  great  deal 
of  munitions  and  ammunitions  for  use  by  the  British  army  during  the  late 


AUSTRIAN  DIPLOMACY  LESS  HANDICAPPED         303 

South  African  War,  to  which  the  government  of  the  United  States  referred 
incidentally  in  reply  to  a  note  of  the  Vienna  government  protesting  against 
the  large  exports  of  war  materials  to  the  Entente  countries  from  the  United 
States  in  August,  1915 : 

"During  the  Boer  War  between  Great  Britain  and  the  South 
African  Republics  the  patrol  of  the  coasts  of  neighboring  neutral 
colonies  (Portuguese  East  Africa,  especially)  by  British  naval 
vessels  prevented  arms  and  ammunitions  reaching  the  Transvaal 
and  Orange  Free  State.  The  allied  Republics  were  in  a  situation 
almost  identical  in  that  respect  with  that  in  which  Austria-Hun- 
gary and  Germany  find  themselves  at  the  present  time.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  the  commercial  isolation  of  one  belligerent,  Germany 
sold  to  Great  Britain,  the  other  belligerent,  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  kilos  of  explosives,  gunpowder,  cartridges,  shot  and  weapons ; 
and  it  is  known  that  Austria-Hungary  also  sold  similar  munitions 
to  the  same  purchaser,  though  in  smaller  quantities.  While,  as 
compared  with  the  present  war,  the  quantities  sold  were  small  (a 
table  of  the  sales  is  appended)  the  principle  of  neutrality  involved 
is  the  same." 

To  this  I  would  add,  as  a  combatant  on  the  Boer  side  during  the  late 
South  African  War,  that  when  later  a  party  of  Boer  soldiers,  myself  in- 
cluded, were  obliged  to  leave  South  Africa  for  the  United  States  and 
effected  our  emigration  via  the  Austrian  port  of  Triest,  the  authorities  there 
made  our  transit  to  Hamburg  and  New  York,  over  Austro-Hungarian 
territory,  conditional  upon  the  understanding  that  none  of  us  would  re- 
main within  the  boundaries  of  the  Danube  Monarchy.  After  that  we  were 
transported  across  the  country  under  police  escortment,  lest  one  of  the 
ex-soldiers  of  the  two  Boer  republics  should  select  to  remain  in  Anglophile 
Austria-Hungary. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  United  States  government  did  not  wholly 
state  the  case  in  its  note.  It  was  overlooked  entirely  that  from  American 
ports  more  munitions  of  war,  ammunition,  general  equipment,  food,  forage, 
wheel-transportation,  and  saddle  and  pack  animals  were  exported  to  South 
Africa,  by  the  British  government,  under  the  auspices  of  the  government 
of  the  United  States,  than  from  the  remaining  non-^British  world  together ; 
that  the  ports  of  New  Orleans  and  Galveston  were  regularly  established 
British  military  bases,  and  that  the  United  States  government,  regardless 
of  protests  and  an  action  in  a  Federal  Court  initiated  by  the  governments 
of  the  South  African  Republic  and  the  Orange  Free  State,  permitted  these 
things  and  remained  heedless  to  the  fact  that  American  muleteers  were 
forced  into  the  British  army  against  their  will. 

On  the  side  of  Germany  I  would  add  that  Emperor  William  II, 
stretched  his  neutrality  so  far,  for  love  of  his  grandmother,  it  would  seem, 
that  he  submitted  to  the  British  general  staff  his  own  ideas  how  the  resist- 


304  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

ancc  of  the  Boers  could  be  broken.    For  those  ideas  I  will  say  that  they 
were  useless  in  the  guerilla  warfare  we  were  practicing. 

Such  are  the  asj^ects  of  yesterday  in  diplomacy.  The  United  States 
Department  of  State  answered  with  an  argument  based  on  its  own  sins, 
and  the  British  government  supplied  the  ''tables  of  sales  ...  ap- 
pended" to  give  that  argument  an  extra  sting  in  those  days  and  for  our 
times  and  posterity  a  most  peculiar  flavor. 

Diplomacy  Reduced  to  Plain  Business 

Mr.  Archbald,  the  American  "war"  correspondent,  who  later  managed 
to  bring  on  a  critical  international  situation,  and  the  recall  of  Dr.  Dumba, 
the  Austro-Hungarian  Ambassador  at  Washington,  by  letting  everybody 
aboard  his  steamer  know  that  he  was  the  carrier  of  important  political  dis- 
patches, a  blossoming  diplomatist,  therefore,  was  brought  to  my  attention 
in  Vienna  on  one  of  my  trips  through  Austria.  A  gentleman,  whom  I  will 
not  name  for  his  own  sake,  and  with  whom  I  had  dealing  in  matters 
referring  to  censorship,  asked  me  one  day,  how  much  I  could  tell  him  about 
Mr.  Archbald.  I  replied  that  I  had  met  the  gentleman  in  the  hotel  I  was 
stopping  at,  the  "Bristol."  That  did  not  seem  to  be  enough.  Did  I  know 
Mr.  Archbald  well  ?  No,  not  so  well !  Could  I  vouch  for  him  as  reliable  ? 
To  which  I  replied  that  I  never  vouched  for  any  man,  except  he  was  well 
known  to  me.  Mr.  Archbald,  no  doubt,  would  meet  the  requirements  at 
the  front,  and  then  there  was  the  censorship  to  take  care  of  his  literary 
efforts. 

But  it  seemed  that  I  was  talking  in  a  direction  diflFerent  from  that  of 
which  my  questioner  was  thinking.  Did  I  know  Mr.  Archbald  as  a  man 
whose  conduct  was  one  of  discretion  and  perspicacity?  My  reply  was  as 
before,  to  wit :  I  was  not  in  the  habit  of  passing  judgment  upon  persons 
I  did  not  intimately  know.  For  some  time  I  was  interrogated  on  what 
Mr.  Archbald's  standing  was  in  the  American  journalistic  and  social  world. 
Since  I  had  heard  of  the  man  for  the  first  time  in  my  life  when  I  met 
him  at  the  hotel,  and  when  he  calmly  informed  me  that  in  a  day  or  two 
he  would  be  received  by  Emperor  Francis  Joseph,  I  could  give  no  informa- 
tion that  seemed  satisfactory  to  the  government  official,  who  later  expressed 
himself  to  the  effect  that  I  seemed  to  be  overcautious. 

A  year  later  the  man  confessed  to  me  that  after  all  he  was  now  able 
to  value  my  attitude.  Mr.  Archbald  had  been  found  out,  as  it  were,  and 
Dr.  Dumba  had  passed  me  on  the  stairs  of  the  Ballhausplatz  building  not 
in  a  mood  to  be  interviewed.  His  notions  on  the  propriety  of  things  had 
led  to  his  dismissal  by  the  government  of  the  United  States  and  his  com- 
plete relegation  in  the  Austro-Hungarian  diplomatic  service,  as  will  happen 
in  such  cases. 


DIPLOMACY  RBDUCED  TO  PLAIN  BUSINESS  305 

But  something  far  worse  had  happened.  Though  the  Austro-Hungarian 
government  had  been  one  of  the  first  to  agree  to  the  inviolabiUty  of  the 
diplomatic  cyphergrams  and  mail  pouches  of  the  United  States  embassies 
and  legations,  the  government  in  Washington  had  thought  it  necessary  to 
now  deny  the  Austro-Hungarian  diplomatic  mission  in  the  United  States 
that  very  same  privilege.  It  was  argued  that  since  Dr.  Dumba  had  been 
exposed  as  a  fomenter  of  acts  inimicable  to  the  American  public  interest, 
his  embassy  could  no  longer  be  left  in  the  possession  of  a  privilege  which 
made  secret  communicating  between  the  Austro-Hungarian  embassy  in 
Washington  and  the  government  in  Vienna  possible. 

Without  wishing  to  inject  myself  into  this,  I  would  go  on  record  as 
saying  that  this  was  poor  policy.  The  concessions  known  as  "diplomatic 
privileges  and  the  inviolability  of  diplomatic  telegrams  and  mail"  can  no 
longer  be  defended.  They  have  been  the  very  invitation  to  intrigue. 
International  machination,  indeed,  would  be  of  the  riskiest  nature  an 
enterprise,  if  it  were  not  that  in  the  past  ambassadors  and  ministers 
plenipotentiary  have  been  able  to  communicate  with  one  another  and  their 
governments  by  means  of  code  messages  that  generally  defied  scrutiny  if 
done  in  a  good  cypher,  which  in  addition  to  being  secret  itself  defied  detec- 
tion by  being  constantly  changed  or  substituted  by  another. 

The  withdrawal  of  the  "diplomatic  privilege"  in  question,  left  the 
Vienna  Ministry  of  the  Exterior  in  the  plight  of  being  now  unable  to  re- 
ceive from  its  charge  d'aif aires  in  Washington,  Baron  Zwiedenik,  the  tips 
and  information  it  needed  to  shape  its  conduct  so  that  it  would  give  the 
minimum  of  ofifense  to  the  government  of  the  United  States. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  system  of  communication  substituted  was  most 
unsatisfactory  to  the  Austrians.  Its  general  form  was  this :  The  Austro- 
Hungarian  diplomatic  mission  in  Washington  was  required  to  submit  to 
the  United  States  Department  of  State  its  communications  addressed  to 
the  government  in  Vienna  in  texte  claire.  The  plain  text  of  the  message 
was  then  transcribed  in  the  State  Department  into  a  code  of  the  United 
States  diplomatic  service.  After  that  the  cyphergram  would  be  cabled  to 
the  United  States  embassy  at  Vienna,  where  decodization  took  place,  the 
result  being  transmitted  to  the  Austrian  Ministry  of  the  Exterior  in  plain 
text. 

Later  this  system  was  somewhat  modified.  I  had  several  occasions  to 
point  out  in  my  dispatches  that  the  modus  operandi  was  an  expedient  of  an 
unfair  and  dangerous  character  under  the  circumstances.  One  of  them 
was  when  a  secretary  of  the  United  States  embassy  in  Vienna,  a  Mr.  S. 
L.  C,  failed  to  deliver  promptly,  as  was  the  intention  of  Mr.  Penfield, 
the  ambassador,  a  rather  important  communication  so  transmitted,  keeping 


306  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

it  in  a  coat  pocket  for  twenty-four  hours,  and  improving  thereby  greatly 
the  chances  of  war. 

While  a  universally  applied  innovation  of  that  sort  could  only  be 
recommended,  in  this  instance  it  left  a  government  badly  handicapped  in 
the  face  of  a  condition  which  to  a  large  extent  had  been  created  by  the 
abuse  of  "diplomatic  privilege."  in  a  war  that  had  been  brought  about  by 
this  very  means  of  secret  diplomacy.  Nothing  whatever  can  be  said  in 
condonation  of  activity  of  the  nature  Dr.  Dumba  was  linked  with. 
Sabotage  is  indeed  looked  upon  as  a  perfectly  admissible  means  of  war. 
if  employed  in  the  country  of  the  enemy,  but,  together  with  its  twin  brother, 
propaganda,  which  is  but  sabotage  of  a  mental  character,  it  certainly  is 
out  of  place  in  a  neutral  country,  no  matter  how  much  that  country  may 
aid  one  of  the  belligerents.  On  strictly  moral  grounds  the  practice  is 
justifiable,  of  course,  but  international  relations  can  not  be  put  on  that 
plane,  if  war  is  to  be  confined  to  its  hearth.  The  public  interest  of  a  neutral 
must  be  respected  by  the  belligerents,  or  ought  to  be  respected,  no  matter 
what  the  situation  on  the  other  side  of  the  ledger. 

As  it  was,  the  withdrawal  of  * 'diplomatic  privileges"  from  the  agents 
of  Austria-Hungary,  made  havoc  unavoidable.  Thereafter  the  Vienna 
government  found  it  impossible  to  keep  itself  properly  informed  on  the 
attitude  of  the  government  of  the  United  States,  and  the  quality  of  Ameri- 
can public  opinion.  This  is  to  be  regretted  from  several  angles.  The 
Austro-Hungarian  government  was  far  better  able  to  put  a  correct  interpre- 
tation upon  this  attitude  and  public  opinion  than  was  Berlin,  and,  as  I 
have  good  reason  to  say,  the  cause  of  peace  would  not  have  suffered  had 
the  United  States  government  confined  its  resentment  of  Dr.  Dumba's 
activities  to  his  dismissal,  especially  since  it  counted  upon  separating 
Austria-Hungary  and  Germany  as  allies. 

In  attending  to  the  duties  of  war  and  political  correspondent,  I  had 
in  the  course  of  time  met  every  Austro-Hungarian  government  official  of 
prominence.  With  some  of  them  I  became  well  acquainted,  and  not  a 
few  of  them  were  friends  of  mine.  Being  inclined  to  look  under  the  sur- 
face of  things,  and  to  regard  government  anywhere  as  the  agency  of  public 
administration,  instead  of  an  avowedly  or  unavowedly  heaven-sent  mission, 
I  was  able  to  see  behind  the  screen  of  obscurantism  which  governments  like 
to  surround  themselves  with,  and  found  in  the  dignity-scented  atmosphere 
of  the  Ballhausplatz,  a  sincere,  albeit  selfish,  desire  to  remain  at  peace  with 
the  United  States. 

Against  this,  however,  was  placed  Austro-Hungarian  public  interest, 
which  was  no  less  important  to  the  men  in  Vienna  than  was  British  pub- 
lic interest  to  the  gentlemen  who  in  Buckingham  Palace  undid  Interna- 
tional Law  at  their  leisure.     To  reconcile  Austro-Hungarian  public  in- 


DIPLOMACY  REDUCED  TO  PLAIN  BUSINESS  307 

terest  with  United  States  public  interest,  in  order  that  peace  might  be 
preserved,  was  not  easy,  however.  The  Vienna  government  was  not  in 
a  position  to  entirely  place  in  a  secondary  class  the  public  welfare  it  was 
caring  for,  and  there  had  to  be  a  certain  amount  of  maneuvering  for  points 
of  vantage  in  the  attempts  to  reconcile  the  interests  of  the  United  States 
with  those  of  Austria-Hungary. 

Good  international  relations  are  the  result  of  give  and  take,  just  as 
good  relations  are  that  within  the  state,  social  groups  and  family.  But 
give  and  take  become  impossible  when  one  of  the  parties  is  blindfolded  and 
gagged  in  such  a  manner  as  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was  this 
by  the  withdrawal  of  diplomatic  privilege  from  its  mission  in  Washington. 

It  was  entirely  out  of  the  question  for  the  Austro-Hungarian  charge 
d'affaires  to  warn  his  government  of  this  or  that  move,  the  advent  of 
which  was  clear  to  him  because  he  not  alone  understood  the  position  of 
his  country  but  was,  supposedly  at  least,  familiar  with  the  policies  and 
idiosyncracies  of  his  government.  On  the  other  hand,  the  men  in  the 
foreign  ministry,  could  not  beforehand  ascertain  what,  in  the  opinion  of 
its  diplomatic  agent,  the  effect  of  this  note  or  that  act  might  be.  The 
situation  was  very  similar  of  having  the  defendant  in  an  action  represented 
by  the  attorney  of  the  plaintiff.  The  United  States  State  Department  did 
not  place  prescribed  limits  upon  the  communications  of  the  Austro-Hun- 
garian government  and  its  diplomatists  in  Washington,  but  it  did  impose 
a  condition  which  made  the  free  and  frank  exchange  of  opinion  between 
the  two  impossible,  which  under  the  circumstances  was  the  only  way  of 
avoiding  an  extension  of  the  European  War,  which  had  to  be  feared. 

I  have  gone  into  this  at  some  length,  because  it  was  this  state  of 
affairs  which  ultimately  made  me  one  of  the  advisers  of  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  government,  and  later  ipso  facto  the  "diplomatic"  representative 
of  the  United  States  in  Vienna. 

Tisza's  View  of  the  Situation  in  1916 

Before  I  enter  upon  that  sad  chapter  in  diplomacy,  I  must  outline 
what  the  actual  attitude  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was  toward 
the  United  States.  I  will  do  that  by  recording  what  the  leading  officials  of 
this  government  thought  and  did. 

Previously  I  have  mentioned  an  interview  with  Count  Tisza,  minister- 
president  of  the  Hungarian  government,  and  within  the  boundaries  of  that 
state  rather  absolute.  I  must  state  here,  since  so  little  is  known  of  the 
governmental  systems  of  the  Dual  Monarchy,  that  Austria  and  Hungary 
were  confederated  states  by  treaty,  and  that  each  retained  independent 
control  of  its  own  internal  affairs,  being  susceptible  to  Austrian  or  Hun- 


308  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

garian  influence  only,  as  the  case  might  be,  to  the  extent  in  which  the 
Emperor  of  Austria  and  Apostolic  King  of  Hungary,  the  same  person, 
might  through  his  own  influence  and  powers  modify  or  shape  the  legislation 
of  the  Austrian  Reichsrat  and  the  Hungarian  parliament.  The  Minister 
of  the  Exterior  was  the  minister  of  the  imperial  house,  and  the  diplomatic 
service,  or  better,  foreign  representation,  was  therefore  an  adjunct  of  the 
two  crowns,  held  in  common.  The  military  establishment,  in  harmony 
with  this,  was  of  a  triple  character.  The  forces  of  the  line  and  certain 
reserve  bans  were  known  as  "das  Gemeinsame  Heer,"  and  were  under 
the  control  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  minister  of  war  and  his  general  staflF. 
The  older  bans  of  reserves,  known  as  the  "Landwehr"  in  Austria,  and  the 
"Honved"  in  Hungary,  were  under  the  administration  of  the  national 
defense  ministries  in  Vienna  and  Budapest.  The  person  of  the  emperor- 
king,  however,  was  the  supreme  commander  of  the  three  branches  of  the 
Austro-Hungarian  military  establishment. 

Count  Tisza,  then,  was  the  actual  head  of  government  in  Hungary,  and 
as  such  his  position  in  Vienna  was  one  of  great  influence.  So  great  was 
this,  in  fact,  that  he  had  succeeded  in  keeping  Hungarians  in  charge  of 
Austro-Hungarian  foreign  relations  for  some  time.  Count  Berchtold  was 
a  Hungarian  aristocrat,  whom  another  Hungarian  nobleman,  Baron  Burian, 
replaced.  To  placate  the  Slavic  elements  in  the  monarchy  the  post  of 
Minister  of  the  Imperial  House  and  of  the  Exterior  was  later  given  to 
Count  Czernin,  a  Czech  noble. 

As  the  result  of  the  interview  I  had  with  Count  Tisza  on  February 
26th,  1916,  I  was  allowed  to  quote  the  Hungarian  premier  to  the  extent : 

"For  the  United  States  to  engage  in  the  European  War  would  be 
a  crime  against  humanity." 

That  was  not  all  Count  Tisza  said  in  the  course  of  a  two-hour  inter- 
view. Even  then  Count  Tisza  was  fully  convinced  that  the  European  War 
could  not  end  without  becoming  a  world  war.  When  I  reached  my  hotel 
I  made  such  notes  as  I  deemed  necessary,  as  is  my  practice,  since  I  never 
interview  a  person  with  a  pad  of  paper  and  pencil  in  my  hands,  having 
learned  long  ago  that  this  is  the  best  way  of  not  getting  the  information 
sought.   From  these  notes  I  gather  the  following : 

After  having  asked  my  opinion  in  regard  to  the  situation  in  Rumania, 
Count  Tisza  left  his  chair  and  began  to  walk  up  and  down  in  his  office. 
For  some  time  he  said  nothing. 

"The  outlook  in  Washington  is  not  particularly  encouraging  to  me," 
he  said,  as  he  passed  me  on  his  way  to  and  fro.  "Of  course,  there  are 
a  good  many  optimists  who  do  not  agree  with  me.  Some  men  have  the 
habit  of  translating  their  wishes  into  facts.     I  am  not  of  that  sort. 

"It  is  impossible  to  get  reliable  information  from  the  United  States. 


TISZA'S  VIEW  OF  THE  SITUATION  IN  1916  309 

When  I  ask  the  ministry  of  the  exterior  to  give  me  data  on  this  or  that, 
it  says  that  it  does  not  have  it,  and  can  not  obtain  it.  Instead  of  reports 
from  our  cJmrge  in  Washington,  they  send  me  the  daily  digests  that  are 
made,  in  the  press  department,  of  the  news  contained  in  the  foreign  news- 
papers. Since  all  of  that  news  has  passed  over  British  and  French  cables, 
and  has  then  been  doctored  by  the  censors,  no  credence  can  be  given  it.  By 
the  way — you  are  familiar  with  cable  conditions  and  the  like,  is  there  a  way 
of  getting  news  into  and  out  of  the  United  States,  through  some  neutral 
country,  perhaps,  without  having  it  interfered  with  by  the  British  and 
French  censors.     What  is  your  own  experience?" 

I  pointed  out  that  there  was  no  channel  of  telegraphic  communication 
from  or  to  anywhere  in  this  wide  world  which  was  not  watched  by  the 
British  and  French  governments.  I  had  been  able  to  get  mail  matter  past 
them  by  routing  it  via  Bergen  in  Norway,  but  was  never  sure  of  its  arrival, 
because  the  British  cruisers  would  often  search  these  steamers. 

"I  thought  so,"  was  the  laconic  comment  of  the  premier,  who  resumed 
his  walking.    After  a  while  he  stopped  again  before  me. 

Count  Tisza  Doubted  Mr.  Wilson's  Integrity 

"It  has  been  asserted  that  there  is  some  sort  of  understanding  between 
the  government  of  the  United  States  and  Allied  governments,"  began  Count 
Tisza.  "I  am  familiar  enough  with  government  in  your  country  to  know 
that  this  can  not  have  been  done  in  accord  with  the  provisions  of  the 
United  States  Constitution.  But  gentlemen's  agreements  can  be  made,  and 
my  experience  permits  me  to  say  that  such  agreements  can  be  carried 
into  effect  over  the  head  of  any  parliament." 

I  found  it  difficult  to  repress  a  smile.  Count  Tisza  saw  it,  and 
wondered. 

"In  times  of  war,  parliaments  are  confronted  by  the  government  only 
with  faits  accomplis,  Your  Excellency!"  I  remarked. 

Count  Tisza's  face  brightened  up  for  a  second. 

"Well,  all  journalists  are  cynics,"  he  said.  "I  suppose,  they  get  that 
way  against  their  own  wishes." 

The  premier  resumed  his  perambulations.  After  a  while  I  became 
conscious  of  his  intention  to  have  me  make  a  remark  in  regard  to  the  sub- 
ject of  agreements. 

"In  the  United  States  treaties  are  made  by  and  with  the  consent  of 
the  United  States  Senate,  Your  Excellency !  But  that  you  know,  of  course ! 
I  am  not  able  to  say  whether  or  no  these  rumors  concerning  a  gentlemen's 
agreement,  by  which  the  United  States  government  would  come  to  the 
rescue  of  the  Allies,  if  necessary,  are  true  or  not.  I  have  heard  the  same 
thing,  but  have  no  means  of  learning  whether  the  rumors  are  founded  on 


310  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

fact  or  not.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  rumors  are  not  founded  on  a  known 
fact,  since  the  person  or  persons  involved  would  be  obliged  to  maintain  the 
strictest  secrecy.  My  impression  is  that  the  rumors  are  the  result  of 
a  combination  of  conditions  everywhere. 

"Nobody  in  the  United  States  has  the  right  to  make  such  an  agreement, 
and  since  the  general  policy  of  the  Wilson  administration,  in  regard  to 
foreign  affairs,  has  not  a  few  opponents  in  the  United  States  Senate,  it  is 
not  even  probable  that  a  gentlemen's  agreement  of  that  sort  has  been 
reached.  The  Senate  is  rather  jealous  of  its  prerogatives  and  if  I  know 
anything  at  all  concerning  that  body,  and  the  mood  of  Mr.  Wilson's 
opponents,  I  may  say  that  the  slightest  knowledge  of  such  an  agreement 
would  have  led  to  an  interpellation  of  the  government  before  now.  I  am 
not  inclined,  therefore,  to  believe  the  rumors." 

"But  what  is  there  that  could  prevent  Mr.  Wilson  from  giving  some 
such  assurance  to — the  British  ambassador,  for  instance?"  asked  Count 
Tisza.* 

"Assurance  there  is  none,  Your  Excellency!"     I  replied.     "But  the 


♦  I  could  not  do  better  than  to  reproduce  here  a  part  of  the  preface  of  Joseph  Reinach's 
6ook.  "Lcs  Commentaires  de  Polybe,"  published  by  the  Bibliotheque-Charpentier,  Paris,  early 
.u   1917. 

M.  Relnach  wrote: 

"Why  was  it  that  I  did  not  doubt  America,  even  in  the  days  when  I  wrote  some  rather  sharp 
remarks  concerning  its  slowness,  or,  again,  when  men  of  importance^  maintained  that  her  neu- 
trality was  of  greater  advantage  to  the  Entente  than  her  intervention?  I  had  for  that  two 
principal  reasons,  one  of  them  of  a  particular,  and  the  other  of  a  general,  order,  which  to  relate 
will  be  of  some  interest,  perhaps, 

"As  to  the  first:  An  enthusiastic  friend  of  Roosevelt  brousfht  to  me  one  day  the  intimate 
friend  of  President  Wilson,  Colonel  House.  I  had  hardly  talked  to  him  freely  when  I  found 
myself  overwhelmed  by  the  intelligence  and  sincerity  of  the  man;  a  soul  at  once  exalted  and 
clear.  When  he  assured  me  (it  was  in  the  first  months  of  191 S)  that  Wilson  was  convinced  of 
the  good  cause  of  the  Entente  in  the  war.  I  believed  it.  When  he  assured  me,  moreover,  that 
Wilson  would  never  obey  anything  but  his  conscience,  and  that  as  a  result  he  would  intervene, 
before  the  end  of  the  war,  in  favor  of  the  Entente,  I  believed  it. 

"Colonel  House,  as  you  may  surmise,  did  not  fix  a  date.  He  strove  at  the  same  time, 
with  much  tact,  not  to  compromise  the  highest  magistrate  of  his  country,  and  not  to  have  mis- 
understood the  moral  quality  of  his  friend.  He  told  me  In  addition  that  \Yilson  was  following 
Ills  designs  farsightedly.  and  that  his  will  was  strong  and  tenacious.  His  (Wilson's)  ambition  was 
to  first  convert  to  the  ideas  he  thoueht  iust  the  grand  maiority  of  his  cocitizens;  he  would  not 
act  until  later.  Incapable  of  going  beyond  a  line  of  the  Constitution,  he  would  use  every  right 
he  held  under  it. 

"House  sooke  in  the  same  strain  a  year  afterwards,  when  he  was  on  his  second  trip  to 
Europe.  In  that  manner  he  armed  me  against  my  impatience  and,  to  be  quite  frank,  against  the 
failures  of  his  friend  which  presently  came. 

"Wilson  became  candidate  for  a  second  time  for  the  presidency.  The  gross  of  the  Democratic 
forces  is  in  the  Middle  West  and  in  the  Western  States.  The  taste  for  peace  there  was  akin 
to  pacifism.  The  Germans  there  are  numerous  and  also  the  German  Americans;  they  were  excited 
or  troubled  by  an  active  propaganda.  Finally,  Wilson  would  have  for  a  rival  Roosevelt  or  a  friend 
of  the  impetuous  Teddy.  .  .  From  then  on,  Wilson,  descending  into  the  electoral  arena, 
descended  himself,  so  to  speak,  and  as  candidate  was  no  longer  his  better  self.  It  was  then  that 
\t  defied  his  vehement  adversaries  to  find  a  single  man  capable  of  establishing  who  was  right  and 
who  was  wrong  in  the  srreat  conflict  and  that  he  pronounced  the  words  just  as  famous:  Too  proud 
to  a^ht.^  But  re-elected,  and  prevented  bv  usage  from  seeking  for  the  third  time  the  royalty  of 
the  White  House,  he  was  freed  of  all  foibles  or  necessary  prudence  (sic).  At  present  he  allows 
only  his  heart  to  speak  in  accord  with  his  reason.  He  is  sending  into  the  world  splendid  and 
ttrong  formulas,  being  the  first  writer  of  his  country.  Very  soon  he  made  an  unanimity  of  that 
rast  people^  of  a  hundred  millions,  carrying  it  to  new  horizons,  and  he  has  written  his  name  under 
those  of  his  most  illustrious  predecessors,  Washington   and  Lincoln.     .     ,     ." 

^  Note. — The  fact  that  Monsieur  Reinach  is  so  poorly  informed  of  political  conditions  in  the 
United  States  brings  it  nowise  into  doubt  his  veracity  in  connection  with  the  extraordinary  state- 
ments made  in  the  preface,  only  a  part  of  which  Is  here  reproduced.  By  order  of  United  States 
governmental  agencies,  the  book  in  question  was  withdrawn  from  the  marked  and  "put  aside"  in  the 
American  libraries. 


COUNT  TISZA  DOUBTED  MR.  WILSON'S  INTEGRITY    311 

conditions  are  against  the  making  of  such  an  agreement.  At  any  rate 
the  agreement  could  never  be  cited  in  Congress  as  an  obligation  of  the 
United  States  government  to  go  to  war  for  the  benefit  of  the  Allies." 

"That  is  perfectly  clear  to  me,"  said  the  premier.  "But  as  I  have 
intimated  before,  the  United  States  government,  as  well  as  any  other,  can 
create  a  situation  which  will  meet  with  the  terms  of  a  gentlemen's  agree- 
ment. I  may  say  that  it  is  quite  easy  for  a  government  to  not  only  create 
such  a  situation,  but  to  bring  it  about  in  such  a  manner  that  the  public 
will  be  none  the  wiser. 

"Things  are  happening  every  day  just  now  that  would  form  the 
substance  of  a  really  fine  pretext.  More  of  them  will  happen,  and  whether 
the  United  States  stays  out  of,  or  enters,  the  war  is  entirely  a  question 
to  be  decided  upon  in  Washington.  For  the  purpose  of  meeting,  as  effec- 
tively as  we  can,  the  British  blockade,  so  that  it  may  not  reduce  us  by 
starvation,  we  may  have  to  do  things  in  the  future  that  would  give  Mr. 
Wilson  every  opportunity  to  enter  the  war. 

"In  fact,  I  am  sure  that  this  will  take  place — gentlemen's  agreement 
or  no.  So  long  as  Mr.  Bryan  was  Secretary  of  State  we  had  a  chance, 
I  think.  I  fear  that  the  natural  tendencies  of  the  American  people  are 
against  us,  or  at  least  are  such  that  they  may  be  turned  against  us  at  any 
moment.  The  people  of  the  United  States  have  too  much  in  common  to 
ever  look  with  equanimity  upon  disaster  to  the  British  arms.  Is  not  that 
your  opinion  also?" 

I  replied  that  such  was  my  opinion. 

"Very  well,  then,"  continued  Count  Tisza.  "We  have  the  conditions 
favorable  to  bringing  the  resources  of  the  United  States  against  us.  In 
fact  that  is  already  being  done  on  a  scale  that  has  now  ceased  to  alarm  me, 
because  I  am  under  the  influence  of  the  realization  of  a  much  greater 
danger — active  participation  by  the  United  States  in  the  war  against  us. 

"The  note  concerning  the  furnishing  to  the  Allies  of  such  prodigal 
quantities  of  war  material,  which  we  sent  to  the  United  States  government 
not  so  long  ago,  was  framed  by  Count  Burian  at  my  request.  I  did  not 
expect  any  other  answer  than  what  we  received.  I  was  interested  only 
in  what  tenor  the  reply  would  have.  That  tenor  confirmed  my  worst 
fears. 

"I  have  learned  that  whole  industries  in  the  United  States  have  been 
converted  into  munition  and  ammunition  plants.  Only  yesterday  I  had 
a  report  on  that.  Huge  loans  are  being  negotiated,  many  of  them  openly, 
others  secretly,  so  that  the  Allies  may  have  the  necessary  credits  in  the 
United  States.    That  will  go  on,  of  course. 

"In  the  end  the  indebtedness  of  the  Allied  governments  in. the  United 
States  will  be  so  great  that  a  defeat  of  the  Allies  can  not  be  contemplated 


312  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

in  the  United  States  without  the  probability  of  large  losses.  To  express 
myself  more  clearly,  I  will  say  that  the  day  will  come  on  which  the 
government  of  the  United  States  will  engage  in  this  war  against  us  for 
the  mere  purpose  of  rescuing  the  investments  in  the  war  loans  and  war 
debts  of  the  American  capitalist.     Do  you  follow  me?"* 

I  did  indeed  follow  the  words  of  the  premier,  and  said  so. 

"That  means  that  we  can  not  bring  this  war  to  a  conclusion  without 
having  to  measure  issues  with  the  United  States. 

"Well,  for  the  time  being  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  follow  a  policy  of 
conciliation.  I  hope  that  our  internal  conditions  will  permit  us  to  do  that. 
Food  is  getting  to  be  very  scarce.  If  we  have  a  good  crop  this  year,  we 
may  be  able  to  weather  the  storm,  if  not,  the  crisis  will  be  here. 

"I  have  spoken  very  frankly  to  you.  The  men  in  the  Ministry  of 
the  Exterior  could  not  do  that.  I  heard  from  them  concerning  you  some 
time  ago,  and  I  may  say  that  they  have  a  high  opinion  of  your  work. 
Since  your  service  reaches  so  many  people  in  the  United  States,  I  thought 
it  best  that  I  should  outline  to  you  what  the  basis  of  negotiations  between 
the  Austro-Hungarian  and  United  States  governments  is  to  be,  so  far 
as  we  are  concerned.  Always  bear  in  mind  that  we  do  not  want  a  war 
with  the  United  States,  and  that  we  shall  do  our  best  to  get  Berlin  to 
adopt  the  same  principle. 

"I  beg  you  to  take  toward  that  attitude  of  ours  a  sympathetic  stand, 
and  in  consideration  of  that  will  be  of  assistance  to  you  in  case  you 
should  have  trouble  with  our  censors.  Some  of  those  men  do  not  seem  to 
realize  that  the  neutral  correspondent  must  not  permit  himself  to  show 
partiality  and  that  his  reports  must  be  accurate  in  order  to  retain  their 
value.    Let  me  know  whenever  you  run  into  that  state  of  affairs." 

Vienna  Not  Fond  of  Submarine  Warfare 

To  this  verbatim  rendition  of  my  notes  on  this  interview,  I  must  add 
that  Count  Tisza  was  rather  bitter  in  his  comment  on  Mr.  Wilson  and 


•  "The  financial  history  of  the  six  months  from  the  end  of  the  summer  of  1916  up  to  the 
entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  in  April,  1917,  remains  to  be  written.  Very  few 
persons  outside  the  half  dozen  officials  of  the  British  treasury,  who  lived  in  daily  contact  with 
the  immense  anxieties  and  impossible  financial  requirements  of  those  days  can  fully  realize  what 
steadfastness  and  courage  were  needed  and  how  entirely  hopeless  the  task  would  soon  have 
become  without  the  assistance  of  the  United  States  treasury. — John  Maynard  Keynes,  in  The 
Economic  Consequences  of  the  Peace. 

It  is  to  be  presumed,  of  course,  that  a  man  who  served  in  the  British  treasury  would  know 
what  he  is  talking  about.  Mr.  Keynes,  moreover,  is  too  serious  a  person  to  make  the  above 
statement  without  realizing  what  full  responsibility  for  it  means.  On  the  other  hand,  by  whose 
authority  did  the  United  States  treasury,  in  the  six  months  in  question,  assist  the  British  treasury, 
and  what  means  did  it  make  use  of,  seeing  that  Congress  voted  no  appropriations  for  the 
purpose?  In  the  face  of  the  fact  that  Congress  did  not  empower  anybody  at  that  time  to 
come  to  the  assistance  of  the  British  treasury,  it  seems  reasonable  to  assume  that  considerable 
juggling  was  undertaken.  I  say  considerable  juggling,  because  to  prevent  the  task  of  the  British 
treasury  becoming  hopeless  just  then  took  vast  amounts  in  either  gold  shipments  or  credits.  Who 
authorized  either  or  both  in  a  manner  that  the  United  States  treasury  became  a  party  to  the 
transaction?     Would  Congress  deem  it  necessary  to  look  into  this? 


VIENNA  NOT  FOND  OF  SUBMARINE  WARFARE      313 

Mr.  Lansing.  At  any  rate  there  was  no  doubt  that  the  Hungarian  premier 
understood  the  situation  thoroughly  and  had  the  courage  to  face  it  with 
that  grim  determination  which  marked  the  whole  of  his  political  career. 
When  finally  we  parted  he  authorized  me  to  use  but  the  one  sentence,  I 
have  here  repeated,  and  also  suggested  that  I  write  as  little  as  possible 
about  him.  To  get  that  lone  sentence  through  he  had  to  issue  a  special 
order  to  every  censor  along  the  Atistro-Hungarian  route  of  my  dispatch. 

An  interview  with  Baron  Burian  was  of  more  or  less  the  same  tenor. 
Since  the  Austro-Hungarian  minister  of  foreign  affairs  knew  that  he 
was  talking  for  publication,  he  was  less  direct  in  his  statements,  and  con- 
fined himself  largely  to  the  situation  in  the  monarchy  as  created  by  the 
British  blockade.  He  made  a  few  sarcastic  references  to  the  attitude  of 
the  United  States  government  toward  the  British  "The  Declaration  of 
London  Orders  in  Council,"  and,  being  more  savant  than  politician,  he 
found  it  hard  to  realize  why  the  government  of  the  United  States  had 
supinely  accepted  the  substitution  of  the  British  Orders  in  Privy  Council 
for  International  Law. 

Meanwhile  food  conditions  were  worse  in  Austria  and  Hungary 
than  even  in  Germany.  While  the  assassination  of  Count  Stuergkh,  the 
Austrian  premier,  had  indeed  removed  a  stumbling  block  in  the  way  of 
efficient  food  regulation,  the  tenure  of  office  by  that  man  had  left  little 
enough  to  do  it  with.  When  finally  the  food  problems  were  taken  in  hand, 
the  larder  was  almost  empty. 

The  death  of  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  was  a  hard  blow  to  the  Austrians 
and  Hungarians.  Somewhat  given  to  superstitions,  the  light-hearted  people 
of  the  Danube  Monarchies  saw  in  this  bereavement  a  bad  omen  for  the 
future.  The  old  ruler  had  been  so  long  an  institution  in  Austria  and 
Hungary  that  most  people  found  it  hard  to  understand  why  death  should 
have  carried  him  off  before  the  War  was  ended.  The  man  was  no  longer 
able  to  give  the  affairs  of  state  intelligent  attention,  but  his  very  figure 
seemed  to  be  a  promise  that  the  days  of  the  Dual  Monarchy  would  yet  be 
many,  and  that  better  times  were  ahead. 

In  democracies  such  things  may  be  hard  to  understand,  but  the  fact 
is  that  in  monarchies  the  state  finds  in  the  ruler  a  very  patent  incarnation. 
He  is  in  effect  and  for  practical  purposes  the  visualization  of  an  idea,  and 
logically,  or  illogically,  the  weal  of  the  monarchical  commonwealth  is 
brought  into  relation  with  the  personal  vicissitudes  of  the  sovereign. 

It  was  so  when  Francis  Joseph  died. 

His  death,  however,  had  another  consequence.  The  old  man  still  lived 
in  the  age  of  chivalry — the  times  when  the  commander  of  a  besieged  town 
could  treat  with  the  commander  of  the  besieging  forces  and  get  the  latter's 
respectful  attention — ^the  days  of  pleasant  memory,  when  soldiers  still  wore 


314  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

uniforms  gay  and  gaudy  with  color  and  so  cut  they  they  showed  off  the  man. 
Francis  Joseph  had  grown  up  in  the  times  of  the  hollow  square  and  ball 
ammunition  and  military  decencies  generally.  Such  things  as  a  submarine 
disgusted  him,  and,  though  he  was  not  exactly  a  sentimentalist,  the  thought 
of  having  people  drown  at  sea  after  a  torpedo  attack  was  as  loathsome 
to  him  as  the  starving  of  woman  and  children.  Francis  Joseph  was  not 
a  very  lovely  sort  of  father,  not  what  one  might  call  an  "old  dear,"  but 
for  all  that  he  was  a  good  father  to  his  children — a  good  ruler  to  his  people. 

The  infirmities  of  age  had  left  little  political  sagacity  in  the  old  emperor, 
and  American  institutions  were  a  smell  in  the  nostrils  of  this  aristocrat 
Df  aristocrats.  Upon  the  United  States,  the  irascible  old  man  looked  with 
cynical  disdain,  and  it  was  not  regard  for  the  government  in  Washington 
that  caused  him  to  counsel,  as  he  constantly  did,  never  to  use  the  sub- 
marine against  merchantment  so  long  as  the  lives  of  passengers  of  any 
nationality,  enemies  included,  were  thereby  placed  in  jeopardy. 

I  had  some  intimate  acquaintances  at  the  court,  and  from  these  I 
learned  that  Francis  Joseph  was  unalterably  opposed  to  the  submarine,  was 
this  in  fact  long  before  the  European  War.  On  several  occasions  he  had 
sounded  foreign  governments  on  their  inclinations  in  the  matter,  but  he 
never  succeeded  in  finding  any  encouragement  for  the  total  suppression  of 
this  "pest."  This  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  own  little  war  fleet  was  in 
position  to  greatly  benefit  by  the  murderous  innovation.  He  placed  the 
submarine  in  the  same  class  as  the  Maxim  silencer,  saying  that  both 
were  unfit  for  use  by  decent  men  and  governments.  Had  Emperor  Francis 
Joseph  lived  on,  some  parts  of  the  history  of  the  Great  War  would  have 
a  different  aspect.  There  would  have  been  no  renewal  of  the  use  of  the 
submarine  against  merchant  shipping.  From  that  angle  a  long  life  and 
tenure  of  trust  was  still  too  short  to  accomplish  its  best. 

Diplomacy  of  the  Barbed- Wire  Brand 

What  Count  Tisza  thought  in  February,  1916,  was  known  in  Berlin, 
of  course.  It  is  quite  possible  that  up  to  the  "Sussex"  affair  that  was 
not  as  well  understood,  as  it  was  when  the  first  notes  on  this  subject 
arrived  from  Washington.  The  Hungarian  premier  had  counselled  caution, 
and  the  records  of  submarine  warfare  of  that  period  show  that  his  words 
were  not  entirely  lost.  Commanders  of  German  submarines  were  more 
careful  than  they  had  been,  but  seem  to  have  fallen  victim,  in  the  case 
of  the  "Sussex"  to  the  hazards  of  their  metier.  The  sinking  of  the  ship 
on  March  24th,  caused  the  government  of  the  United  States  to  go  into 
n^otiations  with  the  German  government  in  regard  more  to  the  general 
principles  of  German  submarine  warfare  as  to  specific  instances.     Many 


DlPtOlViACY  OF  THE  BARBED-WIRfe  BRAND  315 

notes  were  exchanged  and  as  the  result  of  this  Germany  declared  in  the 
note  dated  May  4th,  1916,  her  position  to  be  as  follows: 

"As  the  German  Government  has  repeatedly  declared,  it  can- 
not dispense  with  the  use  of  the  submarine  weapon  in  the  conduct 
of  warfare  against  enemy  trade.  The  German  government,  how- 
ever, has  now  decided  to  make  a  further  concession  in  adopting 
the  methods  of  submarine  warfare  to  the  interests  of  the  neutrals ; 
in  reaching  this  decision  the  German  government  has  been  actuated 
by  considerations  which  are  above  the  level  of  the  disputed 
question. 

**The  German  government  attaches  no  less  importance  to  the 
sacred  principles  of  humanity  than  the  Government  of  the  United 
States.  Again,  it  fully  takes  into  account  that  both  Governments 
have  for  many  years  cooperated  in  developing  international  law 
in  conformity  with  these  principles,  the  ultimate  object  of  which 
has  been  always  to  confine  warfare  on  sea  and  on  land  to  the 
armed  forces  of  the  belligerents  and  to  safeguard,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, non-combatants  against  the  horrors  of  war. 

*'For  in  answer  to  the  appeal  of  the  United  States  government 
on  behalf  of  the  sacred  principles  of  humanity  and  international 
law,  the  German  Government  must  repeat  once  more  that  it  was 
not  the  German  but  the  British  government  which,  ignoring  all  the 
accepted  rules  of  international  law,  has  extended  this  terrible  war 
to  the  lives  and  property  of  non-combatants,  having  no  regard 
whatever  for  the  interests  and  rights  of  the  neutrals  and  non- 
combatants  that  through  this  method  of  warfare  have  been 
seriously  injured. 

"In  self-defense  against  the  illegal  conduct  of  British  warfare, 
while  fighting  a  bitter  struggle  for  her  national  existence,  Germany 
had  to  resort  to  the  hard  but  effective  weapon  of  submarine  war- 
fare. 

"The  German  people  knows  that  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  has  the  power  to  confine  this  war  to  the  armed  forces 
of  the  belligerent  countries  in  the  interest  of  humanity  and  the 
maintenance  of  international  law.  The  Government  of  the  United 
States  would  have  been  certain  of  attaining  this  end  had  it  been 
determined  to  insist  against  Great  Britain  on  its  incontestable 
rights  to  the  freedom  of  the  seas.  But,  as  matters  stand,  the 
German  people  is  under  the  impression  that  the  Government  of  the 
United  States,  while  demanding  that  Germany,  struggling  for  her 
existence,  shall  restrain  the  use  of  an  effective  weapon,  and 
while  making  the  compliance  with  these  demands  a  condition  for 
the  maintenance  of  relations  with  Germany,  confines  itself  to  pro- 
tests against  the  illegal  methods  adopted  by  Germany's 
enemies.     ... 

"Accordingly,  the  German  Government  .  .  .  does  not 
doubt  that  the  Government  of  the  United  States  will  now  demand 
and  insist  that  the  British  Government  shall  forthwith  observe 


316  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  rules  of  international  law  universally  recognized  before  the 
war,  as  they  are  laid  down  in  the  notes  presented  by  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  to  the  British  Government  on  December 
28,  1914,  and  November  5,  1915.  Should  the  steps  taken  by  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  not  attain  the  object  it  desires, 
to  have  the  laws  of  humanity  followed  by  all  belligerent  nations, 
the  German  Government  would  then  be  facing  a  new  situation,  in 
which  it  must  reserve  itself  complete  liberty  of  decision."  * 

In  the  reply  of  Mr.  Lansing,  dated  May  8th,  no  prospect  was  left 
the  German  Government  that  its  suggestions,  in  regard  to  Great  Britain, 
would  be  accepted.  That  note  said  with  curt  brevity,  what  Count  Tisza 
expected  it  would,  as  he  stated  to  me: 

"The  Government  of  the  United  States  feels  it  necessary  to 
state  that  it  takes  it  for  granted  that  the  Imperial  German  Govern- 
ment does  not  intend  to  imply  that  the  maintenance  of  its  newly 
announced  policy  is  in  any  way  contingent  upon  the  course  or  result 
of  diplomatic  negotiations  between  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  and  any  other  belligerent  Government.  ...  In  order, 
however,  to  avoid  any  possible  misunderstanding,  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  notifies  the  Imperial  Government  that  it  can- 
not for  a  moment  entertain,  much  less  discuss,  a  suggestion  that 
respect  by  German  naval  authorities  for  the  rights  of  citizens  of 
the  United  States  upon  the  high  seas  should  in  any  way  or  in 
the  slightest  degree  be  made  contingent  upon  the  conduct  of  any 
other  Government  affecting  the  rights  of  neutrals  and  non- 
combatants.  Responsibility  in  such  matters  is  single,  not  joint; 
absolute,  not  relative." 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  future  text  writers  of  International  Law  will 
not  agree  with  Mr.  Lansing,  if  he  be  the  author  of  the  note,  that  ''respon- 
sibility in  such  matters  is  single,  not  joint;  absolute,  not  relative."  It 
would  be,  morally,  just  as  easy  for  a  government  to  set  up  the  principle 
in  jurisprudence  that  a  law  broken  leads  to  prosecution  in  the  one  case 
and  immunity  in  the  other.  In  other  words  a  crime  would  not  be  a 
crime  in  all  cases,  or  at  least  enforcement  of  the  law  in  one  instance 
would  not  of  necessity  have  to  lead  to  enforcement  in  another. 

In  the  United  States  Senate  were  men  who  did  not  think  in  so 
peculiar  a  groove.  After  long  consideration  of  the  problem  they  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  best  to  warn  American  citizens  against 
travelling  on  armed  vessels  in  the  mercantile  service.  In  a  letter  to  Mr. 
Stone,  chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  Mr. 
Wilson  refused  to  do  so.  To  the  impartial  observer  it  would  seem  that  to 
listen  to  the  advice  of  the  Senate  in  this  instance  would  have  been  the 
least  the  president  could  have  done  after  showing  himself  so  accommodating 

•  It  was  under  this  stipulation  that   Germany   resumed   the  submarine   warfare   on   a  larger 
scale  in  1917. 


DIPLOMACY  OF  THE  BARBED-WIRE  BRAND  317 

to  the  decrees  of  the  British  government  known  as  "The  Declaration  of 
London  Orders  in  Council." 

For  the  sake  of  argument  it  may  be  conceded  that  the  detention  of 
all  neutral  ships  in  British  ports  of  search,  the  restraints  on  American 
commerce,  the  violation  of  neutral  mail,  and  the  exercise  of  a  ruthless 
censorship,  were  not  in  themselves  as  grave  an  offense  as  the  killing  of 
American  citizens  in  the  war  zones  of  the  seas,  and  that  the  threat  to 
sever  relations  was  much  more  justified  and  merited  in  the  case  of  Germany 
than  it  would  have  been  in  the  case  of  Great  Britain.  But  those  who 
are  familiar  with  the  attitude  of  the  government  of  the  United  States  to- 
ward native-born  and  naturalized  citizens  of  the  United  States  must 
at  least  wonder  why  it  was  that  such  solicitude  was  shown  in  the  one 
case  and  not  in  the  other.  Under  the  aegis  of  the  Department  of  state  the 
several  United  States  diplomatic  missions  in  Europe,  and  the  consular 
service,  denied  every  obligation  which  the  natural  contract  of  citizenship, 
or  the  contract  of  naturalization,  sets  up  for  the  government  as  against 
the  loyalty  of  the  subject.  In  other  words,  while  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  usually  members  of  crews  of  British  armed  merchant  ships,  could 
endanger,  without  hindrance,  the  relations  between  the  United  States  and 
Germany,  citizens  of  the  United  States  in  Europe  were  at  the  mercy  of 
whatever  government  wanted  to  annoy  them,  and  force  them  into  military 
service,  may  be,  as  soon  as  some  diplomatic  secretary  or  consular  official, 
had  refused  to  extend  a  passport  or  issue  one,  in  compliance  with  in- 
structions from  the  State  Department. 

State  Department  Policy  Not  G)nsistent 

It  came  to  a  point  where  such  citizens  were  arrested  and  jailed  for 
days  at  a  time  by  the  belligerent  governments,  without  a  government 
anxious  for  the  preservation  of  the  rights  abroad  of  the  citizen  caring 
one  iota.  Is  it  possible  that  the  lack  of  co-ordination  in  the  several  divisions 
of  the  State  Department  made  it  impossible  for  Mr.  Wilson  to  know  what 
happened  on  terra  iirma,  while  the  incidents  of  the  high  seas  received  his 
special  care? 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  German  government,  knowing  only  too  well 
that  in  regard  to  protecting  its  citizens  on  land,  the  United  States  govern- 
ment had  not  yet  departed  from  its  rule  "to  do  nothing,"  selected  to  put 
upon  the  attitude  of  Mr.  Wilson,  in  regard  to  citizens  at  sea,  its  own 
interpretation. 

Regardless  of  the  highhanded  manner  in  which  this  government  would 
now  and  then  proceed  against  citizens  of  the  United  States,  it  had  as  a 
glorious  example  of  the  State  Department's  indifference  toward  the  govern- 


318  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

ment's  obligation  incident  to  citizenship,  the  case  of  Mr.  Frank  Ghiloni, 
a  native  born  American,  whom  the  ItaUan  government  detained  at  Barga, 
Italy,  January,  1915,  who  was  later  forced  into  the  Italian  military  service, 
in  the  face  of  a  year's  good-natured  protests,  and  who  did  not  secure 
his  release  until  he  had  been  made  a  prisoner  of  war  by  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  army,  after  being  wounded,  February,  1916. 

Mr.  Lansing  handled  this  very  interesting  case  in  the  following  tele- 
gram to  Mr.  Penfield,  United  States  ambassador  at  Vienna : 

"Ask  release  Ghiloni  upon  his  sworn  statement  that  he  will 
return  immediately  United  States,  and  will  not  leave  United 
States  during  continuance  of  war.  Say  Department  received 
positive  assurances  Ghiloni  impressed  into  Italian  army  against  his 
will,  and  upon  such  assurances  Department  endeavored  obtain 
his  release.  Department  assured  Ghiloni  will  not  revisit  Italy 
during  war." 

The  Austro-Hungarian  government  consented  to  release  Ghiloni  in 
case  certain  conditions  were  complied  with.  To  this  Mr.  Lansing  replied, 
under  date  May  8th,  1916: 

"Mr.  Penfield  is  informed  that  the  first  two  conditions  for  the 
release  of  Mr.  Ghiloni  mentioned  in  his  telegram  of  May  5th  are 
agreed  to  by  the  Department.  As  to  the  third  condition,  while  an 
absolute  guarantee  can  not  be  given,  the  Department  does  not 
believe  that  Mr.  Ghiloni  would  be  seized  by  the  entente  powers. 
The  Government  of  the  United  States  does  not  recognize  the  right 
of  the  entente  powers  to  seize  Mr.  Ghiloni,  and  it  would  demand 
his  immediate  release  in  case  he  was  seized.  Of  course  it  is 
understood  that  Mr.  Ghiloni  would  not  enter  territory  of  Italy, 
and  his  return  to  the  United  States  by  the  Scandinavian  route 
would  seem  advisable." 

On  June  19th,  Mr.  Ghiloni  was  set  free  by  the  Austro-Hungarian 
government,  and  left  for  home. 

It  seems  that  what  the  Government  of  the  United  States  was  not  able 
to  accomplish  in  Italy  it  eflfected  in  Austria-Hungary,  despite  the  fact  that 
the  Italian  government  violated  the  person  of  the  man,  while  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  government  had  the  perfectly  sound  defense  that  it  had  not 
taken  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Ghiloni  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  but  an 
Italian  combatant  on  the  field  of  battle.  Mr.  Lansing  merely  believed  that 
Mr.  Ghiloni  would  not  be  seized  by  the  Entente  Powers,  and  he  must 
have  hoped  that  his  demand  for  immediate  release  would  in  this  case  work 
better  than  it  had  before.  It  was  to  be  understood,  of  course,  that  Mr. 
Ghiloni  was  not  to  enter  Italian  territory,  and  it  would  be  best  if  he  re- 
turned to  his  home  by  the  Scandinavian  route.  Such  is  the  concern  of 
governments  for  their  citizens  in  times  of  war,  such  their  consistency ! 


STATE  DE;PARTMENT  POLICY  NOT  CONSISTENT       319 

There  were  many  such  cases,  and,  so  far  as  Italy  is  concerned,  they 
did  not  always  come  to  a  happy  conclusion  for  the  subject  by  being  found 
wounded  on  the  battlefield  by  the  Austrians.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Austro-Hungarian  government  did  never  feel  that  the  detention  and  im- 
pressment into  military  service  of  citizens  of  the  United  States,  even  if 
they  were  of  Austro-Hungarian  origin  or  descent,  would  greatly  augment 
its  armed  forces. 

Such  matters  depend  upon  conditions  over  which  the  plain  man  has 
no  control. 

The  Cause  of  Future  Political  Moves 

With  these  things  known  to  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  many 
of  the  notes  of  the  government  of  the  United  States  fell  on  ground  that 
was  ill  prepared.  But  the  many  bitter  pills  that  came  from  the  Department 
of  State  were  swallowed  heroically.  The  object  was  to  keep  the  United 
States  out  of  the  War  if  that  were  possible,  and  with  that  in  view  every- 
thing possible  was  done  to  meet  the  views  of  Mr.  Wilson  and  Mr.  Lansing. 

Throughout  the  late  summer  of  1916  the  German  and  Austro- 
Hungarian  governments  let  it  be  understood  that  the  crop  outlook  was 
favorable.  But  the  men  whom  I  interviewed  on  this  subject  did  not  seem 
any  too  sincere  in  their  statements.  One  of  them,  Dr.  Carl  Helfferich, 
at  that  time  food  administrator  of  the  Prussian  government,  merely  hoped 
that  the  crops,  on  which  so  much  depended,  would  be  as  good  as  wished 
for.  He  admitted  in  the  course  of  a  long  conversation  that  there  would 
be  trouble  in  store  for  the  populations  of  Central  Europe,  if  there  was 
the  usual  bad  spell  of  weather  to  make  harvesting  precarious.  September 
is  a  most  unreliable  month  in  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary.  Very  often 
it  will  rain  heavily  for  the  space  of  three  weeks,  and  it  is  nothing  unusual 
to  have  the  entire  month  and  part  of  October  one  succession  of  rains 
and  cloudy  skies.  This  condition  was  aggravated  by  the  fact  that  poor 
cultivation  of  soil  and  lack  of  fertilizers  retarded  the  development  and 
ripening  of  the  crops  in  1916. 

Such  were  the  conditions  in  that  year.  Crops  everywhere  fell  below 
expectation.  A  trip  from  Berlin  through  northern  Germany,  another  to  the 
districts  along  the  Dutch  border,  one  through  Rhenish  Prussia,  Hessia- 
Darmstadt,  and  the  provinces  of  Hanover,  Saxony  and  Brandenburg, 
showed  me  that  crop  conditions  in  Germany  were  worse  than  they  had  ever 
been  since  the  war,  applying  averages.  In  the  kingdoms  of  Saxony,  Bavaria 
and  Wuerttemberg  conditions  were  a  little  better,  but  still  below  the  worst 
average  of  peace. 

It  was  no  better  in  Austria  and  Hungary.  Mr.  Moritz  Benedikt, 
owner  and  editor-in-chief  of  the  Vienna  Neue  Freie  Presse,  a  man  well 


320  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

versed  in  the  affairs  of  the  monarchy,  and  one  of  the  most  influential  peace 
advocates  in  Austria,  confided  to  me  one  day  that  the  encouraging  reports 
which  the  government  was  spreading  through  the  press  had  no  other  founda- 
tion than  to  still  the  fears  of  the  public.  These  reports  had  the  peculiar 
feature  of  admitting  that  in  some  localities  the  crops  were  really  bad,  but 
in  all  others  they  were  said  to  be  so  much  the  better.  Care  was  taken,  of 
course,  to  have  different  sets  of  reports,  and  complete  surveillance  by  the 
press  and  its  news  channels  enabled  the  government  to  say  that  in  Carinthia 
the  crops  were  bad,  but  they  were  good  in  Bohemia,  while  in  Bohemia 
the  report  would  have  it  vice  versa. 

What  conditions  really  were  I  learned  on  a  trip  to  the  Rumanian  front 
in  Transylvania,  which  took  me  through  central  Hungary  and  through  the 
valley  of  the  Danube.  I  learned  that  an  unfavorable  spring,  a  wet  summer 
and  fall  had  resulted  in  an  almost  complete  failure  of  the  wheat  crop. 
The  only  thing  that  was  doing  well  was  the  sugar  beet,  and  in  some  dis- 
tricts maize  had  given  fairly  good  returns.  In  Transylvania  I  found  that 
the  Rumanians  had  driven  off  all  livestock  and  had  burned  most  of  the 
crops  on  the  stalk.  Conditions  there  were  so  bad  that  the  population  of  that 
rich  agricultural  district  would  have  to  be  supported  from  other  parts 
of  Hungary. 

On  my  way  back  from  the  front,  three  weeks  later,  I  took  another 
route  and  found  that  in  northern  Hungary  the  situation  was  no  better.  To 
make  sure  of  the  impressions  I  had  gained,  I  undertook  some  other  trips 
in  October,  to  Galicia,  Bohemia,  Moravia,  Upper  and  Lower  Austria, 
Steiermark,  Carinthia,  Istria,  Croatia  and  Bosnia.  When  this  had  been 
done  I  felt  sure  that  the  end  was  not  far  off,  if  the  Centralist  troops  could 
not  find  in  Rumania  enough  grain  and  foodstuffs  to  offset  the  failure  of 
crops  at  home.  The  governments  encouraged  the  spreading  of  news  to  the 
eflfect  that  the  grain  taken  in  Rumania  would  tide  the  Central  Powers 
over.  I  knew  better.  From  General  Falkenhayn,  commander  of  the  Ninth 
German  army  in  Rumania,  I  had  learned  that  whatever  food  there  was 
found  in  Rumania  would  be  kept  for  the  soldiers.  The  civil  populations 
would  get  the  surplus,  if  there  was  any,  which  he  doubted. 

All  publics  are  plagued  with  short  memories,  and  so  it  came  that  few 
brought  the  stricter  regulation  of  food  consumption  into  relation  with  the 
sanguine  reports  concerning  the  harvest  which  had  been  circulated  in  the 
summer.  Rations  were  reduced  in  Germany,  and  more  so  even  in  Austria 
and  Hungary.  But  the  measures  taken  had  also  one  advantage,  and  that 
was  that  finally  food  distribution  had  been  put  on  a  more  or  less  equitable 
basis,  though  illicit  trading  in  foodstuffs  was  never  wholly  eradicated. 

Already  in  September  of  that  year  was  discussed  the  possibility  of 
re-opening  and  extending  submarine  warfare.    As  yet  the  public  was  not 


THE  CAUSE  OF  FUTURE  POLITICAL  MOVES  321 

in  the  confidence  of  the  two  governments.  Those  of  us  who  spent  much 
of  their  time  in  the  government  offices  knew  well  enough  that  the  question 
was  up.  But  the  American  correspondents  were  averse  to  mentioning  it 
in  print.  In  the  first  place  there  was  the  censorship,  and  whether  a  cause 
be  just  or  not  the  average  man  cannot  help  sympathizing  with  a  starving 
population,  especially  when  he  himself  has  to  starve  along  with  it,  as  I 
did  quite  often,  going  without  bread  on  many  occasions,  because,  there 
was  either  none  to  be  had,  or  the  product  of  the  Austrian  bakers  was  so 
poor  that  one  did  not  dare  eat  it.  When  a  Vienna  baker  fails  to  make 
bread  that  is  at  all  palatable,  the  materials  he  uses  must  be  anything  but 
flour,  which  was  the  case,  of  course.  To  a  small  quantity  of  flour  was 
added  anything  that  was  suitable,  from  dried  clover  hay  to  a  meal  made 
of  frozen  potatoes. 

From  that  angle  the  submarine  war  seemed  justified.  As  George 
Bernard  Shaw  has  expressed  it,  drowning  quickly  women  and  children 
is  to  be  preferred  to  starving  them  to  death  slowly.  I  believe  that  the 
average  statesman,  be  he  Neo-Idealist  or  Megali-Idealist,  or  just  a  plain 
reactionary,  would  accord  that  even  to  the  rat  he  caught  in  a  trap.  At 
least  such  is  the  practice  among  civilized  peoples. 

The  Ever-Wakeful  British  and  French  Censors 

The  withdrawal  of  diplomatic  privileges  from  the  Austro-Hungarian 
diplomatic  mission  in  Washington  had,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  made 
it  impossible  for  the  Vienna  government  to  ascertain  from  its  chargS 
d'affaires,  what  a  resumption  of  the  submarine  warfare  would  lead  to. 
The  Berlin  government  was  no  better  off,  of  course,  and  the  result  was  that 
in  the  Wilhelmstrasse  and  on  the  Ballhausplatz  nobody  knew  to  what  extent 
the  government  of  the  United  States  would  carry  out  its  ill-concealed  in- 
tention indicated  in  Mr.  Lansing's  note  of  May  8th,  1916.  In  Berlin  men 
thought  that  German  propaganda  in  the  United  States  had  somewhat 
modified  the  attitude  of  the  American  public,  and  possibly,  that  of  the 
United  States  government. 

The  American  correspondents  also  had  been  permitted  to  express  them- 
selves a  little  more  frankly  in  regard  to  economic  conditions  in  Central 
Europe.  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  was  done  intentionally,  despite  the 
immediate  consequence,  which  was  giving  comfort  to  the  enemies  of  the 
Central  Empires.  American  correspondents  in  Berlin  were  never  so 
copiously  quoted  in  the  press  of  the  Allied  countries  as  when  in  the  fall 
of  1916  they  wrote  of  general  economic  conditions  in  Central  Europe.  My 
dispatches  used  to  reach  me  again  through  the  Swiss  and  Dutch  papers,  and 
there  was  many  an  occasion  to  wonder  at  the  depth  of  depravity  some 


322  I'HE  CRAFT  SINISTfil^ 

editors  will  sink  to  in  times  of  war.  It  was  well  that  the  Austro-Hungarian 
censors  were  responsible  for  what  I  had  telegraphed— it  was  well  in  the 
light  of  an  experience  I  had  as  the  result  of  what  French  and  British  editors 
did  with  my  dispatches. 

While  French  and  British  newspapers,  and  to  some  extent  the  Swiss 
publications,  were  no  longer  given  free  entry  into  Austria  and  Hungary, 
copies  of  all  of  these  papers  reached  the  governments  in  Vienna  and 
Budapest,  of  course.  They  were  sent  in  by  the  Austro-Hungarian  diplo- 
matic missions  at  Bern,  The  Hague  and  Copenhagen  and  were  minutely 
examined  by  men  expert  in  such  matters. 

Thus  it  came  that  my  distorted  dispatches  would  reach  Vienna  after 
making  the  rounds  in  the  French  and  British  daily  press.  While  I  did  not 
sign  my  name  to  my  articles  and  dispatches,  I  was  nevertheless  easily 
identified  by  mention  of  the  sources  of  origin,  especially  since  I  was  the 
only  American  correspondent  in  Austria-Hungary  and  the  Balkans,  though 
other  men  would  drop  in  and  out.  To  give  the  garbled  version  of  what  I 
had  actually  written  additional  prestige,  re-publication  in  the  British  and 
French  dailies  would  be  accompanied  by  the  remark  that  this  dispatch 
came  from  the  Associated  Press  correspondent  at  Vienna,  Budapest,  Triest, 
Sofia  or  wherever  I  happened  to  be.  In  that  mannner  the  culprit,  as  some 
Austrians  saw  it,  could  always  be  easily  identified. 

In  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs  in  Vienna,  especially  in  its  press 
department  these  "dispatches"  of  mine  were  often  brought  to  my  notice. 
It  was  also  suggested  that  I  protest  against  such  use  of  my  service  and 
name,  but  that  was  out  of  the  question,  of  course.  It  would  have  served 
no  purpose  whatsoever  to  write  a  letter  of  protest  to  one  of  these  journalis- 
tic liars,  especially  since  I  was  dependent  upon  the  good  will  of  their 
censors  to  let  such  of  my  matter  pass  as  they  thought  promotive  of  their 
own  public  interest.  Like  many  another  journalist  so  was  I  obliged  to 
worry  about  getting  a  certain  amount  of  copy  through  for  bread-and- 
butter  considerations. 

Here  again  I  was  run  against  the  condition  that  dispatches  of  mine, 
which  the  British  and  French  censors  had  suppressed  in  transit  to  New 
York,  would  later  appear  distorted  in  the  press  of  the  Allied  countries. 
There  was  no  means  of  ascertaining  how  this  was  done.  But  it  was  done ! 
Either  the  censorship  authorities  turned  these  news  telegrams  over  to  a 
central  propaganda  bureau  of  theirs,  or  the  news  came  into  possession 
of  the  Allied  press  through  the  Renter  and  Havas  affiliations  of  the 
Associated  Press  of  America.  Without  actually  adding  anything  to 
what  I  had  written,  the  dispatch  could  be  made  to  serve  the  purposes 
of  the  Allied  governments  by  being  given  only  in  part.  Such,  indeed,  was 
the  usual  method  of  procedure.     What  was  bad  for  Austria-Hungary  was 


THE  EVER- WAKEFUL  ALLIED  CENSORS  323 

printed;  what  was  favorable  was  suppressed — quite  the  commonest  and 
easiest  form  of  propaganda  there  is.  It  is  all  the  more  effective  since  the 
use  of  a  foreign  source  of  reliability  is  made  possible  in  that  manner. 

Baron  von  Montlong,  chief  of  the  Vienna  foreign  office  press  depart- 
ment, understood  these  things,  but  at  the  headquarters  of  the  chief  military 
censor,  then  at  Baden,  near  Vienna,  they  were  not  understood.  In  this 
manner,  then,  it  came  about  that  eight  of  my  dispatches,  dealing  with  the 
food  and  fuel  situation  in  and  near  Vienna,  were  held  up  by  the  military 
censors  and  carefully  weighed. 

Before  that  could  be  done  the  authority  of  the  foreign  office  press 
department  had  to  be  attacked.  My  dispatches  of  an  economic  or  political 
nature  were  censored  in  the  press  department  of  the  foreign  office,  and  after 
that  left  from  Post  Office  No.  8  without  hitch.  But  the  military  censors 
were  getting  the  garbled  versions  of  them  through  the  foreign  newspapers. 
It  was  decided  by  the  military  censorship  to  review  all  of  my  dispatches 
censored  in  the  Foreign  Office,  and  the  result  of  that  was  not  very  pleasant 
for  me. 

I  was  cited  to  appear  before  Dr.  Brandl,  chief  of  the  Vienna  political 
police.  Like  all  his  ilk,  the  man  was  grave  and  pompous,  and  was 
ready  to  carry  out  the  instructions  from  the  chief  military  censor,  which 
were  the  usual — expulsion  from  Austro-Hungarian  territory. 

But  this  time  the  proviso  was  added  that  I  could  once  more  repeat 
my  offense — writing  newspaper  articles  detrimental  to  the  public  interest 
of  Austria-Hungary.  The  very  moment  that  was  done  I  would  be  under 
arrest  and  on  the  train  going  to  Buchs,  in  Switzerland,  where  I,  no  doubt, 
would  be  received  by  my  friends  of  the  Entente.  Said  friends,  undoubtedly, 
would  give  me  a  hearty  welcome,  seeing  that  I  was  so  ardent  a  supporter 
of  their  cause.  Austro-Hungarian  police  officials  would  see  that  I  met 
none  of  them  so  far  as  Feldkirch,  the  frontier  station. 

After  the  man  had  become  a  little  better  acquainted  with  me,  he  pro- 
duced in  support  of  the  action  a  large  folio  full  of  clippings  and  manuscript 
telegrams  of  mine,  which  were  the  gravamen  of  the  military  censors.  The 
collection  was  quite  interesting.  It  included  many  British  and  French  clip- 
pings, among  them  items  from  the  London  Times,  Daily  Mail,  Chronicle 
and  others,  while  the  French  press  was  represented  by  the  Matin,  Journal 
des  Debats,  Echo  de  Paris,  Pigaro,  ard  the  Journal  de  Geneve.  Then  came 
eight  of  my  detained  telegrams,  fished  up  in  Postoffice  No.  8,  and  a  score 
of  mail  articles.  There  was  also  a  large  report  on  my  activity.  There  was 
no  doubt  in  the  mind  of  the  several  chair-warming  lieutenants,  captains, 
majors,  colonels  and  generals  of  censorship,  that  I  was  truly  a  dangerous 
man  to  have  around.  Items  this  and  that  proved  conclusively  that  I  was 
an  ardent  admirer  of  the  British  and  French,  despite  the  fact  that  my 


324  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

record  as  a  citizen  of  the  South  African  Republic  was  rather  against  this 
assumption.  It  seemed  to  be  a  fact,  however,  that  I  was  a  man  of  the 
Botha  and  Smuts  type. 

I  ended  the  interview  by  saying  that  I  would  take  the  matter  up  with 
Count  Czemin,  the  minister  of  foreign  affairs.  When  the  chief  of  the 
political  police  heard  that  I  had  access  to  His  Excellency,  he  became 
rather  diffident. 

"To  be  quite  frank  about  this,"  he  said,  "I  do  not  fully  agree 
with  the  military  censors,  I  am  afraid  that  they  have  taken  a  snap  judg- 
ment. From  the  matter  in  your  own  handwriting  I  should  judge  that  you 
have  been  fair  enough,  and  I  know  what  takes  place  with  news  dispatches. 
They  are  tailored  to  suit  one's  own  ends.  You  understand,  of  course,  that 
I  am  merely  carrying  out  the  orders  of  the  chief  military  censor." 

I  understood  that,  and  on  the  same  afternoon  there  was  dispatched 
from  the  bureau  of  the  private  cabinet  of  Count  Czernin  a  rather  sharp 
communication  to  the  chief  military  censor,  the  burden  of  which  was  that 
the  military  authorities,  before  acting  in  regard  to  foreign  correspondents, 
no  matter  under  what  circimistances,  had  better  consult  before  the  Ministry 
of  the  Exterior.  An  apologetic  letter,  promising  that  this  would  be  done, 
reached  Count  Czernin  on  the  following  day. 

An  Attempt  to  Believe  the  Incredible 

Emperor  Charles  looked  upon  all  military  and  political  measures  with 
the  eyes  of  the  promising  statesman  he  was.  To  get  peace  as  quickly  as 
possible  was  his  sole  thought.    Count  Tisza  supported  him  in  this. 

In  Austria-Hungary  there  was  not  at  that  time  a  single  man  who 
wished  to  protract  the  tragedy  that  had  the  nation  in  its  grip.  Mr.  Benedict, 
owner  and  editor  of  the  Vienna  Neue  Preie  Presse,  was  agitating  peace 
in  his  paper  to  the  limits  of  the  feasible,  and  Dr.  Henry  Lammasch,  one 
of  the  contributors  of  this  daily,  and  probably  the  best  expert  on  Interna- 
tional Law  anywhere,  did  the  same.  The  thing  went  so  far  that  the  govern- 
ment, though  anxious  for  peace  itself,  had  to  suggest  to  the  Neue  Preie 
Presse  and  nearly  every  other  newspaper  in  the  monarchy,  not  to  overdo 
it,  lest  the  enemies  find  more  comfort  than  was  wise  to  give  them. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  pacifists  had  the  greatest  confidence  in  Mr. 
Wilson.  Mr.  Benedict  went  so  far  as  to  offer  me  a  most  generous  rate 
for  articles  that  were  to  point  out,  from  the  American  point  of  view,  just 
why  Mr.  Wilson  would  in  the  end  see  to  it  that  Great  Britain  would  not 
be  able  to  carry  out  her  program  of  starving  the  Central  Empires  into 
submission. 

The  matter  was  taken  up  at  a  sort  of  editorial  conference,  which  young 


AN  ATTEMPT  TO  BELIEVE  THE  INCREDIBLE         325 

Dr.  Benedikt,  son  of  the  editor,  and  a  well  known  Austrian  journalist, 
also  attended.  I  was  told  that  the  Austro-Hungarian  public  was  getting 
very  restless,  that  the  food  problem  was  crushing,  that  thousands  of  babies 
were  dying  for  the  lack  of  proper  nourishment,  and  that  under  these  circum- 
stances I  could  well  afford  to  break  the  rule  of  my  service,  not  to  write 
for  other  publications  without  specific  permission. 

My  reply  was  that  under  the  circumstances  I  would  not  let  that  rule 
stand  in  the  way,  so  far  as  an  unsigned  article,  or  several  such,  was  con- 
cerned, but  that,  on  the  other  hand,  I  would  not  be  able  to  write  of  Mr. 
Wilson  in  that  light,  because  of  my  inability  to  say  whether  or  no  he  was 
of  that  mind.  To  Mr.  Benedikt  that  was  quite  a  shock.  For  some  reason 
or  other  he  was  under  the  impression  that  this  was  my  opinion  of  Mr. 
Wilson  also.  I  told  him  that  he  was  mistaken.  So  far  as  I  knew  and  could 
ascertain  from  the  American  papers  which  reached  the  United  States 
embassy  in  Vienna,  especially  the  Philadelphia  Public  Ledger,  New  York 
World  and  Times,  and  several  others,  there  was  not  the  least  likelihood  of 
Mr.  Wilson  ever  taking  that  stand.  I  considered  it  entirely  out  of  the 
question  that  the  government  of  the  United  States  would  do  anything, 
contrary  to  the  wishes  of  the  Allies,  that  would  alleviate  food  conditions  in 
Central  Europe.  Washington  had  completely  and  irrevocably  acquiesced 
into  the  "Declaration  of  London  Orders  in  Council,"  despite  the  fact 
that  now  and  then  the  subject  of  International  Law  was  still  referred  to  in 
diplomatic  correspondence. 

To  the  Benedikts  that  came  as  a  surprise.  It  was  then  argued  that  an 
article  from  me  on  Mr.  Wilson  would  at  least  be  a  comfort  to  the  people 
of  Austria,  provided  it  was  so  written  that  comfort  could  be  had  from  it. 
I  dismissed  the  subject  by  stating  again  that  I  was  unwilling  to  write  for 
a  purpose. 

A  day  or  two  later  I  had  a  letter  from  a  Dr.  Lippe,  one  of  the  editors 
of  the  paper,  to  see  Mr.  Benedikt  again  soon.  The  owner  of  the  Neue 
Freie  Presse,  a  paper  often  referred  to  as  the  Times  or  Thunderer  of  the 
Continent,  had  been  taken  sick.  When  I  looked  him  up  at  his  residence 
I  found  that  my  refusal  to  write  on  Mr.  Wilson  had  worried  him  greatly. 

"You  mean  to  say,"  he  began,  "that  you  are  not  of  the  opinion  that  Mr. 
Wilson  will  in  the  end  prevent  the  population  of  the  Central  states  from 
being  starved  as  a  measure  of  war?" 

'^Exactly,  that  is  what  I  mean,"  was  my  reply.  "The  offer  which  Mr. 
Bryan  made  was  not  accepted  by  the  British  and  French  governments,  as 
you  know,  and  the  tone  of  the  "Sussex"  note  should  have  left  no  doubt 
in  your  mind  as  to  what  the  attitude  of  the  United  States  government 
now  is." 

"Then  it  would  seem  that  all  is  lost,"  said  the  old  man.    "The  Allied 


326  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

governments  have*  but  to  keep  up  this  war  long  enough— to  win  it." 

"Such  is  also  my  opinion,  Mr.  Benedikt !"  I  said.  "The  conditions  are 
against  you,  even  if  the  submarine  war  is  resumed  and  on  a  larger  scale." 

Mr.  Benedikt  was  rather  surprised  that  I  mentioned  this  subject. 
Being  a  man  of  great  political  influence  and  good  connections  in  the 
government,  he  knew  what  was  going  on,  but  had  no  reason  to  suspect  that 
news  of  the  proposed  renewal  of  submarine  warfare  had  reached  me  also. 

"Then  you  have  heard  of  it"  he  asked.  "What  will  be  the  result 
of  it?" 

"At  least  war  between  the  United  States  and  Germany,"  I  replied. 

"And  we — Austria-Hungary?"  came  the  question. 

"That  depends  on  what  your  government  does,"  I  answered.  "If  you 
do  join  Germany,  you  will  probably  find  yourself  in  the  same  position.  If 
Austria-Hungary  stands  aloof  she  may  escape  a  declaration  of  war." 

"Which  would  not  make  much  difference,  of  course,"  remarked  the 
editor.    "We  are  defeated,  if  Germany  is  defeated." 

"You  might  get  better  terms  in  the  end,"  I  suggested. 

"Not  from  the  Russians  and  Italians!"  put  in  Mr.  Benedikt.  "More- 
over, Germany  has  stood  by  us.  We  must  stand  by  her.  In  that  case  we 
will  go  down  together. 

But  the  old  man  found  it  far  from  easy  to  accept  these  obvious  and 
very  imminent  aspects  of  the  case.  For  hours  and  hours,  thereafter,  he 
would  try  to  find  comfort  in  what  he  might  induce  me  to  say  in  the  course 
of  an  argument.  But,  I  am  afraid  his  efforts  were  futile.  While  at  times 
I  would  try  to  improve  his  spirits,  I  never  allowed  him  to  think  that  from 
the  United  States  the  Central  Powers  had  anything  to  expect  but  what 
they  had  been  given  in  the  "Sussex"  note.  The  only  way  of  getting  food 
for  the  starving  civil  population  was  in  surrendering.  I  finally  permitted 
myself  to  be  persuaded  into  writing  several  articles  for  the  Neue  Freie 
Presse  in  which  I  occupied  myself  with  the  attitude  of  the  United  States 
congress.  Of  the  future  I  never  said  anything,  because  what  that  future 
would  bring  I  knew,  not  as  the  result  of  inspection  and  speculation,  but 
from  information  that  reached  me  directly  from  the  Department  of  State. 

The  First  of  Two  Major  Political  Moves 

There  was  not  much  in  prospect  for  the  Central  Powers  when  Novem- 
ber of  that  year  came.  The  food  situation  was  bad.  On  the  West  Front  no 
gains  had  been  made,  instead,  large  numbers  of  the  best  troops  had  been 
uselessly  sacrificed  by  Falkenhayn  at  Verdun.  That,  indeed,  was  the  sum 
total  of  military  achievements  of  the  German  troops  on  the  West  Front 
when  winter  approached.    The  British  government  was  calling  new  armies 


THE  FIRST  OF  TWO  MAJOR  POLITICAL  MOVES       327 

into  being,  and  with  every  British  plant  suitable  for  the  purpose  now  busy 
making  munitions  and  ammunition,  the  outlook  in  Flanders  and  France 
was  most  discouraging  to  the  men  in  Vienna  and  Berlin.  On  the  Julian 
front,  the  Italians  had  not  made  gains  that  were  worth  the  sacrifices  in  men 
and  material,  but  Triest,  for  all  that,  was  almost  within  reach  of  Cadorna's 
armies.  Only  the  strongly  fortified  Hermada  position,  near  Opcina,  kept 
the  Italians  back.  In  Rumania  things  were  as  stalemate  as  on  the  remainder 
of  the  Russian  front,  and  it  was  known  that  General  Brousiloflf  would  in 
the  spring  resume  his  operations  with  increased  vigor.  The  Bulgarians  were 
heartily  sick  of  the  war,  and  the  Turks,  though  no  longer  obliged  to  fight 
the  enemy  at  the  gates  of  the  capital,  had  all  they  could  do  to  slow  up  the 
British  advance  in  Mesopotamia.  Meanwhile,  also,  the  want  of  metals  of 
the  better  sort  was  making  itself  felt  in  the  war  supply  departments — 
substitution  everwhere  had  been  more  or  less  a  failure,  or  at  best  a  costly 
expedient. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Central  troops  had  done  well  on  the  defensive, 
and  the  policy  of  the  Entente  governments,  as  again  seen  in  Rumania,  had 
sufifered  serious  defeat.  It  was  thought,  in  Vienna  first,  and  in  Berlin  later, 
that  the  suggesting  of  peace  might,  under  these  conditions,  have  some  good 
results. 

That  the  peace  note  of  Emperor  William  II  had  the  peculiar  tone  it 
took  was  due  to  two  circumstances. 

When  a  man  is  in  the  market  for  a  horse  he  does  not  say  that  he  wants 
to  buy  a  horse  for,  let  us  say,  five  hundred  dollars,  but  that  he  wants  an 
animal  of  a  certain  kind.  That  being  the  case  in  all  transactions  of  give 
and  take,  the  peace  ofifer  of  William  II  could  not  very  well  say  what 
Germany  was  going  to  pay  for  the  thing  it  wanted. 

To  make  the  offer  less  haughty,  might  have  been  good  policy,  had  there 
been  assurance  that  this  would  not  have  been  interpreted  as  a  sign  of 
weakness.  The  governments  of  the  Allies  were  well  informed  what 
economic  conditions  in  Germany  and  the  countries  of  her  allies  were,  but  in 
the  end  they  would,  for  all  that,  give  the  psychological  character  of  the 
peace  proposal  much  more  attention  than  the  reports  of  their  agents. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  proposal  was  rejected  by  London  and  Paris  in 
a  manner  that  left  no  doubt  as  to  the  temper  and  intentions  of  those 
governments.  While  Petrograd  expressed  itself  similarly,  the  Central 
governments  had  a  little  more  encouragement  from  that  quarter.  For 
some  time  efforts  had  been  made  through  the  Grand  ducal  family  of 
Hessia-Darmstadt  to  establish  some  sort  of  understanding  between  the 
HohenzoUern  and  Romanoff  houses.  The  mail  incident  to  this  was  carried 
in  the  German  and  Russian  diplomatic  mail  pouches,  and  the  point  of 
exchange  was  Copenhagen  for  a  while,  Stockholm  being  selected  later. 


328  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Nothing  definite  had  so  far  been  accomplished.  Though  the  Czarina 
was  doing  her  best  to  interest  Russian  government  officials  in  behalf  of 
peace,  the  Sazonoflf-Nikolaievitch  element  was  still  too  strong  to  let  these 
come  to  anything  tangible.  Czar  Nicholas  was  still  the  man  he  had  been 
when  his  chief  of  staff  undertook  to  lie  to  him  about  the  mobilization— • 
a  vacillating  servant  of  other  people's  plans.  As  an  autocrat  he  will  certainly 
go  down  in  history  as  the  very  antithesis  of  what  an  autocrat  is  supposed 
to  be. 

The  refusal  of  the  Allied  governments  to  consider  the  peace  proposal 
was  a  hard  blow  to  Emperor  Charles.  Through  my  connections  at  the  court 
I  learned  that  he  took  it  very  much  to  heart.  So  far,  he  had  consistently 
and  firmly  opposed  the  resumption  of  submarine  warfare  upon  merchant 
men.  He  felt  that  the  next  step  would  bring  the  United  States  into  the 
war,  and  while  he  was  a  little  skeptical  as  to  what  that  might  mean  militarily, 
he  realized  that  the  moral  and  material  support  gained  by  the  enemies  of  the 
Central  Powers  in  that  manner  would  in  the  end  bring  defeat  to  his  army 
and  those  of  his  associates.  Men  like  Count  Tisza,  moreover,  answered 
such  arguments  as:  The  United  States  could  not  hurt  us  more  if  it  was 
an  open  enemy,  with  the  remark  that  this  might  not  be  the  case.  Count 
Tisza  would  point  out  that  military  unpreparedness  in  the  United  States  had 
no  meaning  under  the  circumstances.  Great  Britain  had  raised  armies 
under  similar  conditions  and  had  transported  some  of  them  even  greater 
distances.   If  England  had  found  a  Kitchener,  America  might  do  that  also. 

But  the  advocates  of  submarine  warfare  had  a  good  argument  for 
this.  The  number  of  submarines  built  and  the  technical  improvements  made 
would  end  the  War  before  the  United  States  could  put  a  large  army  in  the 
field.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  hare-brained  chauvinists  there  was 
nobody  in  any  of  the  Central  Powers  governments,  so  far  as  I  have  been 
able  to  ascertain,  who  did  not  admit  that  if  the  submarine  failed  the  war 
was  lost,  even  if  it  were  possible  to  hold  the  fronts  long  enough  to  make 
the  Entente  publics  a  little  more  war-tired  than  they  were.  The  entrance 
into  the  War  by  the  United  States  would  hearten  these  peoples  into  a  further 
submission  to  the  hardships  of  a  protracted  campaign  of  such  proportions, 
and  if  the  United  States  needed  as  much  as  three  years  to  raise  the  needed 
armies  that  could  make  no  difference.  Defeat  was  the  sure  portion  in  the 
end.  Against  the  flagging  spirit  of  the  Central  populations  would  have  to 
be  placed  the  determination  of  the  Allied  governments  and  publics  to  hold 
out  until  the  armies  of  the  United  States  should  be  ready.  While  the  one 
group  was  starving,  the  other  would  have  the  markets  of  the  world  to 
draw  upon.    Subjection,  therefore,  was  inevitable. 

But  as  will  happen  in  such  cases  the  very  arguments  against  a  renewal 
of  submarine  warfare  brought  into  stronger  relief  the  need  for  the  measure 


THE  FIRST  OF  TWO  MAJOR  POLITICAL  MOVES        329 

and  the  injustice  of  the  condition  against  which  the  submarine  was  to 
be  employed,  as  the  Central  public  saw  it.  Things  had  reached  a  stage  in 
which  terms  and  conceptions  of  International  Law  had  no  longer  any  mean- 
ing. On  all  sides  the  argument  was  heard  that  in  self-defense  all  means 
are  fair.  The  existence  of  a  means  suited  for  the  purpose,  if  not  the  prac- 
tice, of  cruiser  warfare  upon  merchant  ships,  was  looked  upon  as  sufficient 
to  legalize  its  acts,  and  in  this,  it  must  be  stated,  a  good  many  text 
writers  on  International  Law  could  be  cited,  though  as  Mr.  Lansing  had 
said  in  a  note,  they  were  in  the  minority. 

On  the  other  hand,  Maritime  Law  had  been  given  its  character  by  the 
acts  and  views  of  governments  of  maritime  nations,  so  that  the  public 
interest  of  such  nations  was  far  better  protected  than  the  public  interest 
of  nations  living  away  from  the  sea.  The  traditional  policy  of  the  United 
States  in  regard  to  Maritime  Law,  that  "free  ships  make  free  goods,"  had 
indeed  fared  badly  at  the  hands  of  the  British  government,  and  even  the 
government  of  the  United  States,  but  there  was  no  inclination  in  Washing- 
ton to  look  upon  the  transgression  of  one  as  the  justification  for  the  trans- 
gression of  another,  whether  the  application  of  the  Orders  in  Privy  Council 
was  unfair  to  the  other  or  not. 

That  the  men  in  Berlin  and  Vienna  were  impatient  of  this  attitude, 
need  not  surprise  us,  since  they,  necessarily,  saw  the  thing  in  the  light  of 
their  own  public  interest,  not  in  the  one  of  the  government  whose  population 
was  growing  rich  on  the  war  orders  of  the  enemies  of  the  Central  Powers 
group  of  belligerents. 

For  all  that.  Emperor  Charles  was  hard  to  move  when  ultimately  the 
question  was  approached  at  a  meeting  held  for  the  purpose  at  German  gen- 
eral headquarters,  shortly  after  New  Year  in  1917.  The  discussions  and 
disputes  lasted  three  days,  and  to  get  a  settlement  the  matter  was  finally 
left  to  the  decision  of  Hindenburg,  the  taking  of  position  for  and  against 
having  resulted  in  a  draw. 

Field-Marshall  Hindenburg  was  not  inclined  to  assume  responsibility 
for  the  step.  When  finally  he  had  been  assured  that  he  was  to  act  only  as 
a  judge,  who  was  to  pass  on  the  practicability  of  the  measure,  he  consented 
to  make  the  decision.  He  had  listened  to  argument  pro  and  con  for  weeks, 
and  was  fully  familiar  with  every  technical  and  political  detail.  He  was 
reported  to  me  as  having  said: 

"What  the  consequences  of  this  step  will  be,  in  so  far  as  the  United 
States  is  concerned,  is  clear,  of  course.  The  best  we  can  hope  for  in  that 
direction  is  that  a  declaration  of  war  will  not  follow.  I  think  it  will  follow. 
We  have  to  consider  then  that  war  with  the  United  States  is  inevitable. 
What  that  means  we  know. 

"The  question  then  is:    Will  the  submarine  be  able  ta  carry  out  the 


330  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

program  it  has  been  given  in  this  scheme — ^in  other  words,  has  from  the 
mind  of  the  naval  experts  been  removed  all  doubt  that  the  submarine  can 
(U)  what  they  expect  of  it? 

"Before  I  make  the  decision,  I  must  ask  the  gentlemen  of  the  naval 
commission  to  once  more  go  over  their  papers  and  plans  with  the  utmost 
care.  If  there  be  the  slightest  weakness  in  their  conclusions  I  beg  to  have 
it  brought  to  my  attention.  It  is  better  that  we  face  those  things  now 
than  later." 

As  results  have  shown  there  was  a  weakness  in  the  conclusions  of  the 
naval  experts.  I  have  no  means  of  knowing  to  what  extent  the  ingenuity, 
resources,  and  resourcefulness  of  the  Allied  naval  services  and  engineers 
were  taken  into  consideration.  Such  things  as  depth  bombs,  the  efficacy 
of  convoying,  and  the  submarine  facing  merchant  ships  fully  armed,  must 
have  been  considered.  How  the  conditions  thus  arising  were  reconciled 
with  the  great  risks  taken  I  have  not  learned,  of  course,  despite  the  fact 
that  my  informant  was  a  member  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  group  at  the 
conference.  It  is  possible  that  the  ingenuity,  resourcefulness  and  willing- 
ness of  the  United  States  '*to  go  the  limit"  were  not  properly  weighed; 
these,  in  fact,  were  totally  unknown  factors  then  so  far  as  the  War  was 
concerned.  My  own  impression  is  that  Great  Britain's  timid  naval  per- 
formance of  the  past  was  the  only  thing  taken  into  account.  Thus  the 
grave  error  was  made.  Emperor  Charles  and  Count  Czernin  accepted  the 
decision  made  by  Hindenburg,  and  a  few  days  later,  Bethmann-Hollweg 
made  the  announcement,  in  the  Reichstag,  that  Germany  would  resume 
submarine  warfare  against  merchantmen  of  any  nationality,  if  found 
within  the  extended  zones  of  war  or  proscription. 


XV 

DIPLOMACY  AT  CROSS  PURPOSES 

SINCE  diplomatists  at  present  are  not  accredited  by  one  government 
to  another,  but  are  looked  upon  as  the  personal  representatives  of 
the  heads  of  governments,  b)e  they  presidents  of  republics  or 
monarchs,  it  is  necessary,  of  course,  to  re-accredit  the  ambassador  or 
minister  in  case  another  sovereign  ascends  the  throne,  or  another  president 
is  inaugurated. 

It  was  so,  when  after  the  death  of  Francis  Joseph,  the  successor  to 
the  crowns  of  Austria  and  Hungary,  Archduke  Charles  Francis  Joseph 
took  charge  of  the  affairs  of  state.  Mr.  Wilson  sent  to  Mr.  Penfield,  the 
United  States  ambassador  at  Vienna,  a  large  carton,  neatly  engraved,  with 
the  formal  accreditation  of  Mr.  Penfield  to  His  Majesty's  person.  Since 
I  read  the  contents  of  this  message  of  cordial  greetings  and  heartiest  good 
will,  I  could  not  but  wonder  how  mighty  a  force  etiquette  becomes  at 
times,  and  how  hypocritical  it  may  be,  withal. 

Mr.  Penfield  was  quite  proud  of  the  occasion.  He  was  received  at  the 
palace  with  all  the  pomp  that  will  mark  such  ceremonies.  There  is  nothing 
that  can  make  the  average  republican  and  democrat  so  glad  as  to  be  shown 
honors  by  royalty.  It  is  a  failing  of  mankind  that  is  easily  explained, 
understood  and  forgiven — even  under  circumstances  such  as  they  were 
just  then.  My  own  share  in  the  matter  was  that  I  sent  a  dispatch  announc- 
ing the  event,  and  for  the  British  and  French  censorship  I  must  say  that 
they  permitted  the  little  notice  to  get  past  them  without  pruning. 

This  little  formality  attended  to,  the  world  resumed  its  round  of 
murder,  mayhem  and  arson — continued  also  to  foster  diplomacy. 

Very  soon  after  this  there  was  a  little  surprise  for  me.  Without 
wishing  to  infer  that  I  can  not  be  "scooped"  by  some  enterprising  colleague, 
I  came  this  time  close  to  overlooking  something  very  important.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  I  saved  what  little  reputation  I  have,  or  had,  in  the  veriest 
nick  of  time.  My  friends  in  the  Vienna  Foreign  Office  kept  me  well  in- 
formed, as  a  rule,  but  this  time  they  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  speak 
of  the  matter  under  consideration. 

I  had  submitted  to  Baron  von  Montlong,  the  chief  of  the  press  depart- 
ment, my  usual  budget  of  dispatches  and  mail  matter,  when  quite  casually 
he  said: 

"I  really  do  not  see  the  necessity  of  sending  an  ambassador  to  Washing- 

331 


332  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

ton  if  at  the  same  time  the  government  of  the  United  States  does  not 
restore  diplomatic  privileges  to  our  mission  there." 

I  did  my  best  to  show  that  I  was  not  startled.  Ambassador  to  Wash- 
ington— where  had  I  been  all  this  time? 

"Yes,  that  would  be  an  improvement,  Herr  von  Montlong"  I  said. 
"But  it  is  quite  possible  that  diplomatic  privileges  will  be  restored." 

The  case  was  one  that  required  caution.  For  one  thing:  At  whose 
suggestion  was  the  ambassador  going  to  be  sent,  and  who  was  the  man? 
It  certainly  could  not  be  Mr.  Wilson  who  wanted  to  make  this  improve- 
ment. But  it  occurred  to  me  that,  since  Mr.  Penfield  had  just  presented  his 
credentials  anew,  and  since  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  had  before 
that  unsuccessfully  tried  to  even  up  a  little  diplomatic  representation  in 
Washington  and  Vienna,  and  was  not  likely  to  renew  that  effort  so  closely 
upon  the  heels  of  the  re-accreditation  of  the  American  ambassador,  it  must 
be  that  the  rapprochement  came  from  the  banks  of  the  Potomac  after  all. 
I  felt  also  that  it  would  have  been  a  graceful  thing  to  do  that,  since  poor 
Emperor-King  Charles  had  as  little  to  do  with  the  European  War  as  I  had. 

"So  far  there  is  no  indication  of  that,"  continued  the  press  department 
chief.  "Of  course,  we  hope  that  it  will  come  to  that.  Count  Tarnowski 
does  not  like  going  to  Washington  with  that  handicap  on  his  hands.  But 
he  hopes  that  this  will  be  removed  when  he  gets  over  there.  You  know  he 
is  a  Pole  and  quite  able — very  able  in  fact!  We  picked  him — well,  not 
altogether  we  ourselves,  Mr.  Penfield  suggested  him — because  the  Poles  are 
said  to  enjoy  a  certain  degree  of  popularity  in  the  United  States." 

It  seemed  that  Count  Tarnow  Tarnowski,  whom  I  had  met  in  Sofia 
over  a  year  ago,  was  not  particularly  anxious  to  go  to  Washington.  It 
had  taken  even  a  talk  with  the  Emperor  to  get  him  interested  in  this 
mission,  which  he  considered  quite  useless.  Of  course,  when  Emperor 
Charles  requested  him  to  do  his  best,  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  go. 
Right  now  the  government  of  the  United  States  was  trying  to  secure  safe 
conduct  for  the  new  ambassador  to  Washington.  So  far  the  Allied  govern- 
ments did  not  seem  to  have  paid  much  heed  to  the  request  of  the  American 
government.  Mr.  von  Montlong  asked  me  not  to  mention  the  matter  just 
then — not  until  he  had  released  it.  A  few  days  later  he  gave  his  consent 
to  a  dispatch  which  I  wrote  in  his  office. 

An  Infested  Diplomatic  Woodpile 

Since  Mr.  Penfield  had  not  gone  to  the  trouble  of  telling  me  anything 
of  this,  I  had  no  reason  to  discuss  the  matter  with  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
I  had  made  up  my  mind,  now  that  I  was  "protected,"  as  we  newspaper 
men  put  it,  to  see  just  what  the  American  ambassador  would  do. 


AN  INFESTED  DIPLOMATIC  WOODPILE  333 

Days  passed  and  Mr.  Penfield  did  not  say  a  word.  Meanwhile,  the 
American  embassy  had  informed  the  Vienna  Foreign  Office  that  it  was 
sorry  to  report  that  the  British  and  French  governments  had  refused  to 
give  a  safe  conduct  for  as  many  persons  as  Count  Tarnowski  intended 
to  take  with  him.  At  first  the  suite  was  to  be  about  a  score,  more  or  less. 
It  finally  dwindled  down  to  eight. 

It  was  this  seeming  reluctancy  on  the  part  of  the  United  States  govern- 
ment, to  induce  the  governments  in  London  and  Paris  to  be  generous  in 
this  little  matter  of  safe  conduct,  which  first  caused  the  Vienna  government 
to  suspect  that  all  was  not  well  in  the  affaire  Tarnowski. 

Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld,  formerly  attached  to  the  Austro-Hun- 
garian  embassy  at  Paris,  and  husband  of  a  former  Miss  Iselin,  had  mean- 
while been  made  chief  of  the  private  cabinet  or  chancery  of  Count  Czernin. 
I  called  on  him  to  get  some  points  in  connection  with  the  mission  of  Count 
Tarnowski  as  ambassador  to  Washington  cleared  up.  The  thing  had  a  most 
irregular  aspect,  when  I  came  to  delve  into  it.  An  attache  of  the  American 
embassy  had  been  led  into  telling  me  that  it  was  the  Austro-Hungarian 
government  which  had  suggested  to  Mr.  Penfield  that  since  he  had  been 
received  again  as  ambassador  it  would  only  be  fair  and  proper  if  another 
Austro-Hungarian  ambassador  be  received  by  President  Wilson.  I  knew 
enough  of  diplomatic  etiquette,  and  the  attitude  of  governments,  to  feel 
that  this  could  not  be  so.  Quite  the  last  thing  the  men  in  the  Vienna 
Foreign  Office  would  do  was  to  become  guilty  of  so  gross  a  breach  of  good 
diplomatic  manners  as  to  ask  Mr.  Wilson  to  receive  an  Austro-Hungarian 
ambassador  just  because  Emperor  Charles  had  received  the  American  am- 
bassador. 

Still  there  was  a  certain  amount  of  evidence  that  pointed  that  way. 
I  could  not  for  a  moment  believe  that  the  United  States  government  would 
not  take  a  firmer  stand  in  the  question  of  securing  safe  conduct  for  Count 
Tarnowski  and  his  party,  if  it  had  itself  suggested  the  re-establishment  on 
a  footing  of  equality  of  diplomatic  relations  with  Vienna.  But  many  things 
were  possible  just  then.  It  was  not  impossible,  for  instance,  that  the 
government  of  the  United  States  would  be  as  congenial  in  this  respect 
as  it  had  been  in  many  others,  so  far  as  Great  Britain  was  concerned.  It 
was  necessary,  therefore,  to  proceed  with  caution. 

Count  Tarnowski  was  staying  at  the  Hotel  Sacher.  I  learned  that  he 
was  greatly  vexed  at  the  turn' afif airs  had  taken.  For  a  day  or  two  it 
seemed  as  if,  after  all,  nothing  would  come  of  his  trip.  Though  in  a  tight 
fix,  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was  as  yet  not  willing  to  make 
concessions  to  the  British  government  in  an  aflFair  that  did  not  concern 
London  as  much  as  Washington,  as  it  seemed. 

With  that  stage  reached  I  thought  it  best  to  consult  Mr.  Penfield.    It 


334  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

was  well  to  be  careful  in  the  presence  of  a  man  who  could  then  and  there 
lift  my  passport  and  cancel  it,  as  the  "plenipotentiaries"  of  the  embassy  did 
several  times  a  week  in  other  cases.  But  one  or  two  hints  brought  Mr. 
Penfield  into  action.  He  wanted  to  know  how  I  came  to  know  so  much 
about  the  appointment  of  Count  Tarnowski,  to  which  I  replied,  timidly 
enough,  that  it  was  my  duty  to  keep  informed  on  so  important  an  affair. 

When  enthusiastic  or  excited,  Mr.  Penlield  had  the  habit  of  stabbing 
the  right  arm-rest  of  his  chair  with  one  of  the  steel  arrows  that  were  thrown 
down  by  the  gross  from  aeroplanes,  when  the  War  was  relatively  new. 
He  would  also  repeat  the  last  few  words  of  a  sentence  several  times.  All 
of  this  he  did  today.  * 

"Let  me  tell  you,  young  man!"  he  said,  "that  I  am  sending  Count 
Tarnowski  to  Washington  and  nobody  else — nobody  else.  Do  you  think 
for  a  moment  that  I  would  sit  and  see  a  war  come  on  without  protecting 
myself — protecting  myself — myself. 

"Not  much!  I  am  sending  the  Count  to  Washington.  When  the 
moment  comes — and  let  me  tell  it  is  not  far  off — I  want  to  have  somebody 
in  Washington  for  whom  I  am  going  to  be  exchanged.  I  trust  these  people 
here,  but  you  can't  trust  those  Germans.  They  are  likely  to  keep  me  here— 
keep  me  here. 

"But  not  if  I  know  anything  about  it.  That's  why  the  Count  goes  to 
Washington.     Do  you  get  that — ^get  that?" 

I  admitted  that  this  was  clear  to  me,  but  humbly  suggested  that  this 
was  a  very  unusual  motive  and  a  dangerous  one  for  the  appointment  of 
ambassadors — a  sort  of  sending  hostages  in  advance  of  a  declaration  of  war. 

"No,  young  man,"  continued  the  ambassador.  "There  are  some  things 
you  don't  know  anything  about.  And  this  is  one  of  them.  I  am  going  to 
have  protection  for  myself  and  Mrs.  Penfield  when  the  day  comes — Der 
Tag,  you  know. 

"O,  it's  coming  all  right !" 

I  left  with  the  feeling  that  the  many  headache  powders  Mr.  Penfield 
was  in  the  habit  of  taking  had  unstrung  him.  He  had  on  several  occasions 
complained  to  me  of  the  violent  headaches,  he  was  subject  to,  and  which 
hard  work  at  his  post  had  not  in  any  manner  alleviated.  I  also  felt  that 
the  American  ambassador  had  created  a  situation  that  was  as  unfair  to 
the  government  in  Washington  as  to  the  one  in  Vienna.  To  protect  himself, 
as  he  viewed  it,  he  had  done  a  most  imprudent  thing. 

Being  merely  a  recorder  of  the  doings  in  my  environment  I  kept  Mr. 
Penfield's  admission  to  myself  and  hoped  that  nobody  would  be  the  wiser 
until  Count  Tarnsowki  had  landed  in  New  York  and  been  received  by 
President  Wilson. 

Count  Tarnowski  left  and  a  day  or  two  after  his  departure  from  Rot- 


AN  INFESTED  DIPLOMATIC  WOODPILE  335 

terdam  the  good  news  came  from  Washington  that  the  conditions  under 
which  the  Austro-Hungarian  charge  d'affairs,  Baron  Zwiedenick,  had 
transmitted  dispatches  to  his  government  had  been  somewhat  modified  in 
his  favor.  That  left  some  hope — at  any  rate  to  those  who  did  not  know 
any  better  and  that  included  Count  Czernin. 

At  the  Vienna  Foreign  Office  they  were  still  under  the  impression 
that  the  sending  of  an  ambassador  had  really  been  suggested  by  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States,  an  impression  which  could  have  been  easily 
removed  had  the  Vienna  Foreign  Office  been  able  to  get  in  touch  directly 
with  its  charge  d'affaires  in  Washington,  without  having  its  dispatches  read 
and  transposed  into  cypher  in  the  American  embassy  at  Vienna. 

To  that  extent  Mr.  Penfield  had  in  his  hands  the  entire  machinery 
of  diplomatic  intercourse.  By  that  means  one  ambassador  was  enabled  to 
get  another  sent  to  his  capital  as  hostage  if  there  should  be  need  for  one. 
The  long  and  short  of  the  affair  was  that  the  United  States  government 
had  been  led  to  believe  that  it  was  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  that 
wanted  to  put  diplomatic  relations  on  a  better  footing,  while  Vienna  thought 
the  same  of  Washington.  Since  that  could  easily  lead  to  more  trouble  in  a 
situation  already  f rought  with  many  great  dangers,  1  could  not  but  marvel 
at  the  power  that  is  given  into  hands  least  qualified  to  use  it. 

But  the  end  of  that  was  not  yet.  Before  I  deal  with  it,  however,  I 
must  for  the  sake  of  chronology,  enter  upon  a  different  subject. 

I  have  already  mentioned  that  Bethmann-Hollweg,  the  German  chan- 
cellor, announced  in  the  German  Reichstag,  the  resumption  of  submarine 
warfare  in  an  extended  zone.  The  Austrian  Reichsrat  being  not  then  in 
session,  having  been  adjourned  since  the  outbreak  of  the  War,  in  fact, 
the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was  not  able  to  announce  its  adherence 
to  the  policy  of  her  ally,  Germany,  in  quite  so  convenient  a  manner. 

Count  Czernin  Before  a  Great  Problem 

One  morning  early — January  31st — I  was  called  up  on  the  telephone 
by  the  press  department  of  the  foreign  office.  Count  Czernin,  the  minister 
of  the  exterior,  wanted  to  see  me  as  soon  as  possible,  I  was  told.  I  hurried 
up  to  the  Ballhausplatz  and  was  taken  to  the  quarters  of  the  minister. 

For  a  while  I  sat  in  the  large  ante-chamber,  locale  of  the  meeting  of 
the  Vienna  Congress,  and  still  adorned  with  the  pictures  of  some  of  the 
men  who  then  shaped  the  course  of  Europe,  under  the  auspices  of  Metter- 
nich,  the  famous.  It  was  very  quiet  in  the  building,  I  noticed.  The  only 
sound  falling  upon  my  ears  was  the  closing  of  doors  in  the  distance.  The 
Diener — door  man  of  the  apartment — sat  immobile  on  the  red-upholstered 
chair  beside  the  door,  as  was  his  wont.    He  had  for  so  many  years  been  so 


336  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

close  to  the  secrets  of  state  and  their  makers,  and  yet  so  far,  that  he  seemed 
to  have  made  up  his  mind  to  be  as  Httle  interested  in  the  affairs  about  him 
as  they  were  in  him. 

Meanwhile,  I  had  learned  that  an  event  of  great  importance  was  about 
to  be  announced  through  me.  The  chief  of  the  press  department  had  in- 
formed me,  with  awe  in  his  voice,  that  few  newspaper  men,  indeed  none, 
so  far  as  he  knew,  had  ever  written  so  epoch-making  a  story  as  I  was  about 
to  write.  I  suspected  what  that  story  would  be,  and  for  a  few  moments 
sharr d  the  excitement  of  the  man. 

From  the  distance  came  the  noise  of  the  streets — rumbling  wagons  and 
clanging  street  cars.  Behind  the  double  doors,  leading  to  the  office  of 
the  minister  of  the  exterior,  two  men  were  talking.  Then  the  outer  door 
opened,  and  a  man  emerged  hastily.  The  Diener  jumped  up  to  see  him 
out,  returned  presently,  and  went  into  the  office  of  Count  Czernin. 

When  the  servant  appeared  again,  he  left  the  door  open,  stepped  to  one 
side,  bowed,  and  then  with  a  movement  of  his  hand  indicated  that  I  was 
expected. 

Count  Czernin  met  me  in  the  middle  of  the  room.  I  noticed,  as  we 
shook  hands,  that  there  was  a  grave  expression  on  his  face.  But  the  voice 
was  calm,  as  he  invited  me  to  be  seated  at  the  side  of  his  roll-top  resk. 

"I  have  taken  the  liberty  to  send  for  you,"  he  said  in  English,  after 
some  perfunctory  remarks  of  greeting  in  German,  "for  the  purpose  of 
having  you  make  an  announcement  for  the  Austro-Hungarian  government. 
It  is  a  sad  mission,  which  I  am  about  to  ask  you  to  undertake.  Who  knows 
what  will  come  of  it! 

"I  do  not  wish  to  influence  you  in  any  manner,  and  I  know  that  you 
can  be  relied  upon;  at  the  same  time,  as  you  will  learn  presently,  I  must 
ask  you  to  be  particularly  careful  as  to  what  you  write  in  connection  with 
this  matter.  The  possibilities  involved  are  great  and  grave.  They  affect 
nothing  less  than  our  diplomatic  relations  with  the  government  of  the  United 
States.  They  may  bring  war,  and  of  that  we  have  had  enough,  as  you 
ought  to  know. 

"I  suggest  that  you  do  not  look  upon  this  matter  as  affecting  any 
particular  nation,  but  all  mankind.  You  have  had  ample  opportunity  to 
see  that  we  have  been  anxious  to  put  an  end  to  this  war.  We  have  had 
enough  of  it.  If  there  was  a  chance  of  talking  this  thing  over  with  our 
enemies  we  would  do  it  tomorrow.  But  that  chance  does  not  exist.  The 
War  continues,  because  the  Allied  governments  want  it  to  continue. 

"We  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  populations  of  the  Allied 
group  would  welcome  the  cessation  of  hostilities  as  would  our  own.  But 
that  is  not  to  be,  except  we  are  willing  to  consider  ourselves  the  vanquished. 

"I  am  not  one  of  those  who  have  much  faith  in  the  War  Map.    There 


COUNT  CZERNIN  BEFORE  A  GREAT  PROBLEM         337 

is  such  a  thing  as  being  victorious  at  the  front  and  defeated  at  home.  We 
are  getting  to  that  fast  enough,  and  have  done  our  best  to  put  a  stop  to 
this  useless  shedding  of  blood.  But  we  have  been  turned  down.  In  the 
face  of  that,  the  War  must  go  on  until  the  enemy  has  a  better  reason  to 
enter  into  negotiations  with  us. 

*'We  have  notified  the  neutral  governments,  or  will  do  that  today,  and 
through  them  our  enemies,  that  the  submarine  war  zone  has  been  extended 
and  shipping  to  Great  Britain  and  her  allies  laid  under  new  restrictions." 

Count  Czernin  took  from  his  desk  a  copy  of  the  diplomatic  note  in 
question  and  handed  it  to  me,  with  the  request  that  I  read  it.  I  read  parts 
of  the  note  several  times  to  familiarize  myself  with  its  principal  contents 
and  then  laid  it  down.  The  minister  then  handed  me  a  statement  he  had 
drafted. 

"I  would  like  you  to  publish  that,"  he  said.  "If  you  don't  care  for 
the  text  the  way  it  is  written,  change  it,  but  be  sure  to  get  into  your  own 
version  that  I  say  here.  At  any  rate  you  will  have  to  translate  the  thing. 
Be  kind  enough  to  let  me  see  it  before  you  telegraph  it." 

The  statement  of  the  minister  seemed  a  little  too  formal  and  academic. 
I  expressed  myself  to  that  effect.  He  was  eager  to  have  the  world  public 
know  what  the  position  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was,  and  I 
thought  it  my  duty  to  make  the  process  as  simple  as  possible,  so  that  he 
who  ran  could  read. 

Count  Czernin  left  his  desk  and  walked  toward  a  far  corner  of  the 
room,  in  which  stood  a  large  table,  covered  with  maps. 

"These  are  the  charts  the  note  refers  to,"  he  said,  taking  up  one  of 
them. 

I  rose  and  walked  to  the  table. 

The  map  in  Count  Czernin's  hands  was  done  on  hydrographic  prin- 
ciples, and  executed  in  blue,  with  red  cross  hatching  showing  the  pro- 
scribed zones. 

"This  white  lane  has  been  left  open  for  the  Greeks,  while  the  one, 
entering  the  Channel  from  the  Atlantic  is  for  American  shipping.  The 
white  spaces  about  the  red  zones  mark  the  waters  left  open  for  the  other 
neutrals.  We  do  not  want  to  interfere  with  the  legitimate  trade  of  the 
neutrals.  What  we  do  want  to  accomplish  is  to  prevent  neutral  ships  in 
addition  to  enemy  ships  from  reaching  British  and  French  ports.  For 
American  ships  we  have  left  this  lane  in  the  Channel.  More  than  that  we 
can  not  do.     What  is  your  opinion  ?" 

While  I  was  studying  the  chart.  Count  Czernin  was  looking  for 
another  one.  The  chart  in  my  hands  showed  all  the  waters  about  Great 
Britain  and  France,  and  the  entire  Mediterranean.  There  was  another, 
he  said,  which  gave  the  several  safe  lanes  for  neutrals  on  a  larger  scale 


338  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

with  a  better  regard  for  accuracy  in  longitude  and  latitude.  All  the  charts 
on  the  table  before  me  were  of  the  kind  I  had  in  my  hands.  Count  Czernin 
walked  over  to  the  other  side  of  the  room,  but  returned  presently,  saying: 

**I  do  not  seem  to  have  another  chart  of  the  other  kind  here.  Well, 
that  won't  matter.    You  can  tell  from  this  one  what  the  new  zones  are." 

I  looked  up  from  the  chart,  and  Count  Czernin  must  have  felt  that  I 
had  my  misgivings  about  the  step.  He  looked  at  me  rather  searchingly,  and 
repeated  his  inquiry : 

"Well,  what  is  your  opinion  of  this  thing?"  he  asked.  There  was  a 
note  of  care  and  uncertainty  in  his  voice. 

**My  opinion  can  not  be  of  any  value  to  Your  Excellency,"  I  said.  "I 
may  say,  however,  that  this  is  a  grave  situation.  So  far  as  Germany  is 
concerned  there  is  bound  to  be  a  severance  of  diplomatic  relations.  I  say 
that  on  the  strength  of  what  I  know.  Your  Excellency  is,  of  course, 
familiar  with  the  recent  address  of  Mr.  Wilson,  the  burden  of  which  is  that 
there  is  to  be  a  peace  without  victory.  Under  the  circumstances  that  must 
be  interpreted  that  there  is  to  be  a  peace  without  victory  for  the  Central 
Powers,  This  decision  on  the  part  of  the  German  government,  and  the 
adhesion  thereto  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  government,  aims  at  a  condition 
that  will  be  contrary  to  the  announcement  of  Mr.  Wilson,  so  long  as  the 
Allied  governments  persist  in  the  attitude  they  assumed  toward  the  recent 
peace  proposal.  I  do  not  think  that  the  men  in  London  and  Paris  are 
willing  to  make  a  peace  without  victory.  In  that  lies  the  difficulty.  A 
rupture  of  diplomatic  relations  between  the  United  States  and  Germany 
seems  imminent  to  me.  Austria-Hungary  may  fare  better.  But  even  of 
that  I  am  not  convinced." 

I  waited  for  an  instant  to  give  Count  Czernin  the  word. 

"And  then?"  he  asked. 

"That,  Your  Excellency,  depends  upon  the  action  of  Congress,"  I 
replied.  "There  is  the  possibility  that  the  opponents  of  Mr.  Wilson  in  the 
Senate  and  House  may  take  more  interest  in  this  affair  when  relations  are 
broken  off  by  Mr.  Wilson  with  Germany.  That  step  is  likely  to  be  the 
denouement  to  the  situation.  If  Congress  does  not  act  then,  it  will,  like 
all  other  such  bodies,  be  ultimately  faced  with  a  fait  accompli — a  declara- 
tion of  war."  * 

"Declaration  of  war?"  asked  the  minister. 

"Something  of  that  sort,  Your  Excellency!"  I  said.  "Much  depends 
upon  the  frame  of  mind  of  the  American  public.  Unfortunately,  I  am  not 
able  to  say  what  that  is.  If  the  tone  of  the  American  newspapers  is  to  be 
relied  upon,  >yar  is  now  inevitable.    There  has  been  a  gradual  building  up 

*  I  was  at  that  time  under  the  impression  that  Congress,  before  giving  Mr.  Wilson  a  free 
hand,  would  undertake  a  sort  of  general  review  of  the  entire  situation.  That  was  the  least  I 
and  others  expected  the  "willful  men"  to  insist  upon. 


COUNT  CZERNIN  BEFORE  A  GREAT  PROBLEM        339 

of  war  sentiment  in  the  United  States.  On  the  other  hand,  the  press  of 
the  United  States  is  not  always  truly  representative  of  public  opinion,  but 
like  all  other  institutions  of  its  sort  it  can  make  public  opinion." 

Count  Czernin  walked  back  to  his  desk  and  seated  himself. 

"Well,  if  the  worst  comes  to  pass,  we  can't  help  it,"  he  said.  "We 
have  to  use  the  submarine  to  shorten  the  war.  There  is  such  a  thing  as 
being  victorious  at  the  front  and  defeated  at  home.  The  food  situation 
here  is  most  pressing.  Our  people  are  half-starved  all  the  time.  Babies 
perish  by  the  thousands,  because  we  cannot  give  them  enough  milk.  If  this 
war  does  not  come  to  an  end  soon,  the  effects  of  the  chronic  food  shortage 
will  impair  the  health  of  the  entire  nation.  We  must  try  to  prevent  that. 
It  is  our  duty  to  prevent  it  by  all  means. 

"I  grant  that  there  are  certain  technicalities  of  international  law  in- 
volved here.  But  we  can  no  longer  regard  them.  It  is  all  very  well  for 
some  men  to  set  themselves  up  as  sole  arbiters  of  international  law,  nor 
would  we  have  any  objections  against  this  if  these  arbiters  dealt  as  fairly 
with  one  side  as  they  have  dealt  with  the  other.    But  they  have  not. 

"The  Central  governments  could  not  do  anything  right  for  some  of 
their  friends — the  American  government  included,  by  the  way — if  they 
stood  on  their  heads.  Save  me  from  the  man  who  prates  loudly  of  inter- 
national law  and  then  interprets  his  own  acts  by  the  public  interest  of  one 
of  the  belligerents.  Of  neutral  advise  we  have  had  enough.  These  good 
neutrals  remind  me  of  men  who  would  stand  idly  by  while  some  person 
was  being  done  to  death  piecemeal  and  who  would  think  that  they  had 
done  their  duty  with  an  occasional :  'O,  don't  hurt  him.'  " 

Count  Czernin  was  bitterly  satirical  at  that  moment.  I  saw  that  his 
hands  had  closed,  and  that  their  knuckles  were  showing  white  from  the 
exertion.  The  man  was  in  a  rage,  but  had  himself  under  full  control. 
His  blue-grey  eyes  stared  at  me  and  his  jaws  were  biting  off  the  sentences. 

"It  is  an  outrage — this  entire  business  !  We  have  a  right  to  exist.  We 
don't  want  anything  from  anybody!  All  we  want  is  the  integrity  of  the 
monarchy.  We  don't  want  war  indemnities !  We  don't  want  anything  from 
the  Italians,  and  want  nothing  from  the  Russians.  The  sensible  man  of 
today  must  realize  that  from  this  war  nothing  can  be  gained  by  anybody — 
no  matter  who  wins.  For  the  sake  of  Europe's  future  it  is  best  that  we 
all  go  home  and  think  over  this  foolish  undertaking. 

"We  have  made  peace  offers.  I  have  told  you  several  times  that  we  do 
not  want  any  of  our  enemies'  territory.  We  have  never  let  it  be  under- 
stood that  we  wanted  as  much  as  a  shovelful  of  earth  that  does  not  belong 
to  us.  At  the  same  time,  we  do  not  want  to  lose  territory,  nor  do  we  want 
to  pay  a  war  indemnity,  since  this  war  is  not  of  our  making. 

"Our  peace  offer  has  been  spurned.    The  food  question,  as  you  know, 


340  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

is  acute.  We  simply  cannot  raise  the  food  we  need  so  long  as  we  must  keep 
in  the  field  millions  of  our  farmers.  That  leaves  but  one  avenue  open. 
Wc  must  shorten  the  War.  We  believe  that  it  will  be  shortened  by  the  use 
of  the  submarine.  For  that  reason  we  have  decided  to  use  that  arm  for 
the  purpose." 

Count  Czernin  paused  for  a  moment.  He  shifted  some  papers  about 
on  his  desk  in  an  aimless  manner,  and  then  turned  to  me  again.  This 
time  he  spoke  in  so  calm  a  tone  that  a  certain  amount  of  indifference  or 
resignation  came  to  the  surface. 

"I  hope  that  our  calculations  are  correct.  I  am  no  expert  in  that  field. 
I  also  realize  that  a  whole  flood  of  declarations  of  war  may  follow  our  step. 
All  that  has  been  considered,  however — even  the  possibility  of  the  United 
States  joining  our  enemies.   At  any  rate,  there  was  no  way  out. 

"I  feel  that  I  must  address  myself  especially  to  the  American  public. 
The  American  government  has  condemned  us  out  of  court.  I  would  like 
to  have  an  American  jury  hear  this  case.  The  American  government  has 
denied  us  the  right  of  self-defense  by  taking  the  stand  that  we  must  not 
use  the  submarine — the  only  means  we  have — against  the  enemy  merchant 
fleet  and  such  neutral  shipping  as  supplies  Great  Britain  and  France  with 
food  stuffs  and  war  materials." 

(Again  Count  Czernin  grew  bitter.  Trained  diplomatist  though  he  was, 
he  found  it  hard  to  master  the  keen  resentment  that  was  surging  over 
him. 

"Mr.  Wilson  thinks  he  is  right.  I  do  not  want  to  question  in  the  least 
that  there  have  been  times  when  he  was  right  in  specific  cases.  But  how 
can  he  say  that  we  are  violating  International  Law,  or  are  the  worst  of- 
fenders, when  he  calmly  permitted  Great  Britain  to  displace  International 
Law  and  every  convention  based  on  it  by  the  Orders  in  Council,  so  that  we 
in  self-defense,  had  to  do  that  also.  Self-preservation  is  a  law  of  nature 
which  even  Mr.  Wilson  has  no  right  to  question,  which  he  would  not 
queston  for  a  moment  if  he  were  in  our  position. 

"Mr.  Bryan  himself,  and  with  him  the  government  of  the  United 
States,  admitted  tacitly  that  Great  Britain  was  breaking  every  tenet  of 
Maritime  Law  when  he  suggested  the  regulation  of  the  imports  into  Ger- 
many of  conditional  contraband.  Would  the  American  government  have 
done  that  if  it  had  not  then  been  cognizant  of  the  fact  that  the  Orders 
in  Privy  Council  contravened  ruthlessly  the  Paris  and  London  declarations  ? 
What  has  become  of  the  sense  of  justice  which  was  then  in  evidence  in 
Washington  ? 

"Of  course,  Mr.  Wilson  has  not  gone  so  far  as  to  protect  Allied 
merchant  shipping  against  the  German  submarines.  But  that  does  not 
mean  anything.    The  shipping  of  the  neutrals  is  able  to  supply  the  Allies 


COUNT  CZERNIN  BEFORE  A  GREAT  PROBLEM         341 

with  all  the  sinews  of  war  they  need,  and,  if  need  be,  enough  British  ships 
could  be  transferred  to  neutrals  for  the  duration  of  the  War  to  keep  the 
British  flag  from  the  high  seas  entirely  and  out  of  harm's  way.  That 
attitude  can  only  be  compared  to  tying  our  arms  behind  our  backs,  and 
telling  us  as  a  friend,  to  go  ahead  now  and  do  what  we  can  do. 

"The  time  has  come  when  there  must  be  a  clear  understanding  on  that 
subject,  and  while  we  have  been  most  respectful  of  the  views  of  the  United 
States  government,  we  must  now  respect  our  own  interests  at  least  as  much. 
The  United  States  has  become  a  great  arsenal  for  the  Allied  armies,  and 
a  great  granary  for  their  populations.  So  much  American  money  is  invested 
in  the  cause  of  the  Allies  that  the  moment  may  already  have  passed  in  which 
actual  participation  in  the  European  War  will  not  be  more  costly  than  the 
financial  losses  that  might  come  to  the  American  investor  from  a  peace 
without  victory  and  without  huge  indemnities  paid  by  us. 

"Such  is  the  impasse  the  situation  has  reached.  We  feel  that  it  will 
make  no  difference  whether  we  face  this  today  or  tomorrow.  Face  it  we 
must  anyway.  We  may  regret  that  such  is  the  case,  and  I  for  one  regret 
it  deeply,  but  what  can  we  do?" 

Such,  indeed,  was  the  aspect  of  the  case.  I  viewed  the  situation  from 
some  of  the  recesses  of  the  Department  of  State,  and  could  not  but  con- 
clude that  Count  Czernin  had  rather  correctly  calculated.  What  he  said 
coincided  merely  with  what  I  knew  to  be  the  fact,  as  this  fact  was  known 
in  the  United  States  embassy  at  Vienna.  Not  being  able  to  even  intimate 
that  the  minister  was  wrong,  I  kept  my  own  counsel. 

"I  think  that  is  all  I  can  say,"  said  Count  Czernin,  after  a  moment's 
pause.  "Use  that  as  you  see  fit.  If  reconcilable  to  your  principles,  let  me 
see  what  you  write  before  you  telegraph  it.  Meanwhile,  I  will  instruct 
the  press  department  and  the  censors  to  let  your  matter  pass  without  ques- 
tion." 

At  five  o'clock  that  afternoon  my  dispatches  were  under  way,  and  a 
copy  of  them  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Korrespondenz  Bureau,  the  Austrian 
semi-official  news  agency. 

Not  in  decades  had  a  newspaper  dispatch  created  such  a  sensation. 
All  that  night  and  for  three  days  following  I  had  telegrams  from  all  over 
Austria  and  Hungary  and  Switzerland  asking  me  to  supply  additional  data. 
The  dismissal  of  Count  Bernstorff  at  Washington  added  to  the  deep  im- 
pression which  the  announcements  of  Berlin  and  Vienna  had  made,  and 
for  days  the  Vienna  press  was  in  the  grip  of  the  wildest  emotion.  Ulti- 
mately, I  collected  a  few  clippings  of  my  dispatches  and  found  that  they 
had  been  reproduced  in  twenty-one  languages,  ten  of  them  used  in  the 
Dual  Monarchy.  It  was  recognized  everywhere  that  the  world  stood  before 
a  new  phase  of  the  European  War — ^the  World  War  phase,  in  which 


342  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

attrition,  cruel  to  the  men  in  the  trenches,  vicious  to  the  civil  populations, 
and  regardless  entirely  of  the  rights  of  neutrals,  was  to  become  the  only 
feature.  Men  gasped  and  women  wept  when  they  came  to  think  of  the 
future,  and  the  cynic  alone  was  henceforth  able  to  view  the  doings  of 
mankind  with  equanimity  and  the  hope  that  soon  or  late  reason  would 
return. 

Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  had  officially  defined  their  position 
in  these  words: 

"Every  day  in  which  the  fearful  struggle  goes  on  brings  new 
devastation,  new  misery,  new  deaths.  Every  day  by  which  the  war 
is  shortened  will  preserve  on  both  sides  the  lives  of  thousands  of 
brave  soldiers,  and  means  a  blessing  for  tortured  humanity.  The 
Imperial  Government,  before  its  own  conscience  and  before  his- 
tory, would  be  unable  to  assume  the  responsibility  if  it  left  untried 
any  one  means  to  hasten  the  end  of  the  war.  Together  with  the 
President  of  the  United  States  it  had  hoped  to  obtain  this  aim  by 
negotiations." 

A  statement  made  by  Mr.  Lansing  on  February  12th  showed  that 
Germany  still  hoped  that  an  agreement  with  the  United  States  on  the  one 
hand,  and  with  the  Allied  governments  on  the  other,  would  be  reached.  The 
reply  of  the  United  States  government  to  the  Swiss  minister  at  Washington, 
however,  demanded  the  prompt  withdrawal  of  the  new  policy  of  submarine 
warfare,  before  negotiations  could  be  entered  into. 

In  Berlin  and  Vienna  it  was  felt  that  this  would  lead  to  nothing 
except  a  repetition  of  the  state  of  affairs  that  followed  the  conditional 
promises  made  by  the  German  government  in  the  "Sussex"  note.  So  long 
as  Washington  was  unwilling  to  bring  the  German  maritime  measures, 
and  its  own  attitude  concerning  them,  in  proper  and  just  relation  to  the 
conduct  of  the  London  and  Paris  governments  so  long  was  there  no 
prospect  that  agreements  of  any  kind  could  be  arrived  at. 

Thus,  the  matter  was  dropped  and  allowed  to  drift  on.  In  the  Central 
capitals  it  was  now  realized  that  relief  could  only  come  from  the  United 
States  Congress,  more  especially  from  the  group  of  men  whom  Mr.  Wilson 
had  labelled :  "Willful."  The  limiting  of  debate  in  the  Senate,  however, 
carried  through  on  March  8th,  and  the  calling  of  Congress  for  a  special 
session,  on  the  following  day,  for  April  16 — later  changed  to  April  2nd — 
took  from  the  Berlin  and  Vienna  governments  what  little  hope  there  was 
left. 

An  American  Ambassador  and  'Tree  Press" 

Mr.  Penfield,  the  American  ambassador  at  Vienna,  had  meanwhile 
grown  somewhat  resentful  that  I  had  made  the  submarine  announcement 
for  Count  Czernin.    It  was  his  attitude  that  the  Austro-Hungarian  govern- 


AN  AMERICAN  AMBASSADOR  AND  "FREE  PRESS"    343 

ment  could  have  used  its  own  semi-official  agency,  the  Korrespondenz 
Bureau,  for  that  purpose,  or  utilized  even  its  official  publication,  the  Wiener 
Zeitung.  He  seemed  to  totally  overlook,  as  did  later  the  Department  of 
State,  that  I  was  a  newspaper  correspondent  and  in  nowise  bound  by 
diplomatic  rules  and  foibles. 

As  employe  of  the  Associated  Press  it  was  my  duty  to  get  first  all 
such  news  as  I  could,  in  fact  that  was  the  very  purpose  of  my  employment. 
Knowing  how  Mr.  Penfield  felt  about  it,  I  took  pains  to  impress  that  upon 
one  of  his  secretaries,  to  which  I  added  that  such  orders  as  he  might  think 
fit  to  give  me  would  have  to  come  from  the  headquarters  of  the  Associated 
Press  in  New  York,  and  that  State  Department  channels  were  open  to 
him  for  that. 

This  somewhat  peculiar  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  ambassador  was  in 
a  large  measure  due  to  the  fact  that  on  several  occasions  he  had  caused  the 
Austro-Hungarian  government  to  get  its  censorship  to  take  from  the 
Vienna  newspapers  such  criticism  of  the  United  States  government  as  he 
thought  unjust.  That  some  of  the  articles  and  editorials  were  intemperate, 
must  be  conceded,  but  for  all  that  it  was  rather  odd  that  the  ambassador 
of  a  government  committed  to  "free  press  and  free  speech"  should  be- 
come active  in  that  manner. 

On  one  occasion  Mr.  Penfield  sent  to  the  Vienna  Foreign  Office  a 
note  in  which  he  demanded  that  all  criticism  of  the  acts  of  the  government 
of  the  United  States  be  discouraged,  if  not  entirely  forbidden.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  this  was  carrying  the  functions  of  an  ambassador  a  little  too 
far — to  unwarranted  highhandedness — and  when  I  was  informed  in  the 
Foreign  Office  that  the  demand  would  be  complied  with,  I  begged  to  be 
excused  from  being  put  in  the  same  category  with  the  Austrian  editors. 

It  developed  in  connection  with  this  discussion  that  Mr.  Penfield  had 
several  times  suggested  that  the  United  States  government  was  holding  the 
Austro-Hungarian  government  responsible  for  what  I  was  sending  out. 
It  was  being  felt  in  Washington,  said  Mr.  Penfield,  that  the  Vienna  foreign 
office,  by  instructing  its  censors,  could  "keep  tabs"  on  me  to  such  an 
extent  that  I  would  become  useless  to  the  service  I  represented,  in  which 
event  I  would  be  recalled. 

Just  what  Mr.  Penfield  wanted  to  accomplish  with  that  I  do  not  know, 
since  my  dispatches  dealt  at  best  only  with  such  criticism  as  I  was  obliged 
to  take  from  the  Vienna  and  Austrian  press.  This  matter  was  permitted 
to  pass,  by  the  British  and  French  censors,  since  it  could  not  but  further 
strain  the  relations  between  the  United  States  and  Austria-Hungary,  which 
was  far  from  being  my  motive.  My  position  in  the  matter  was  not  unlike 
that  of  a  surgeon  who  has  to  undertake  an  operation  whether  it  will  hurt 
the  patient  or  not.     If  certain  chauvinist  newspapers  in  Austria  selected 


344  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

to  criticize  Mr.  Wilson  adversely,  it  was  my  plain  duty  to  send  that  to 
the  United  States;  the  fact  is  that  I  would  balance  such  intemperate  ex- 
pressions with  the  saner  views  of  such  men  as  Mr.  Benedikt,  of  the  Vienna 
Neue  Freie  Presse,  Dr.  Henry  Lammasch  and  others.  The  difficulty  again 
was  that  the  French  and  British  censors  would  delite  the  conciliatory  part 
of  my  dispatches  and  permit  only  the  hostile  expressions  to  reach  New 
York.  ' 

Before  long  I  was  to  have  another  example  of  this.  To  the  announce- 
ment of  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  that  it  would  join  Germany  in 
the  renewal  of  submarine  warfare,  the  government  of  the  United  States 
replied  by  drawing  attention  to  certain  assurances  given  by  the  Vienna 
government  in  the  notes  dealing  with  the  cases  of  ships  that  had  been 
sunk  by  Austro-Hungarian  submarines.  I  succeeded  in  getting  a  resume 
of  the  note's  contents  and  several  quotations,  and  forwarded  them  promptly, 
as  any  other  correspondent  would  have  done,  to  New  York,  finding  nothing 
unusual  at  all  in  the  step  I  had  taken. 

It  would  seem,  however,  that  the  Department  of  State  wanted  to  keep 
the  note  secret,  despite  the  many  assurances  of  Mr.  Wilson  that  open 
diplomacy  alone  could  save  the  world  from  future  calamities. 

One  day,  then.  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld,  chief  of  Count  Czernin's 
private  chancery,  asked  me  to  see  him  as  soon  as  I  could. 

He  was  rather  exasperated,  I  thought.  On  the  desk  before  him  lay 
a  small  stack  of  telegram  forms,  on  which  I  saw  my  own  handwriting. 

To  the  question  by  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld  whether  I  had  written 
the  telegrams  in  question,  I  replied  in  affirmation,  of  course,  and  asked 
why  he  had  withdrawn  them  from  the  telegraph  office,  seeing  that  they 
had  been  filed  almost  a  week  ago. 

"Your  telegrams  went  through  all  right,"  he  said.  "That  is  just 
the  trouble.  This  time  one  of  your  dispatches  did  get  past  the  censors 
in  Great  Britain  and  France.  They  have  a  knack  of  letting  through  what 
they  feel  will  do  us  harm.    I  wish  our  censors  were  as  able. 

"Mr.  Penfield  has  objected  to  the  publication  of  the  contents  of  the 
note.  We  have  just  received  from  him  a  very  curt  inquiry  as  to  how  you 
came  to  learn  of  the  bare  existence  of  the  communication,  let  alone  its 
contents.  It  would  seem  that  the  note  was  to  remain  secret,  at  least  that 
is  the  inference  we  draw  from  the  ambassador's  letter. 

"Inquiry  on  our  part  has  shown  that  the  ambassador  failed  to  com- 
municate to  us  that  desire.  If  the  Department  of  State  wanted  the  note 
to  remain  secret  and  so  instructed  Mr.  Penfield,  the  embassy  here  must 
have  failed  to  inform  us  of  it.  We  can  find  nothing  in  our  bureau  that 
instructs  us  to  keep  the  contents  of  the  note,  or  the  note  itself,  from  the 
public.  It  is  possible,  however,  that  the  embassy  relied  upon  the  usual  course, 


AN  AMERICAN  AMBASSADOR  AND  "FREE  PRESS"    345 

that  of  giving  the  sender  of  a  note  the  privilege  to  publish  it  first.  I  have 
learned  that  this  was  the  intention  of  Count  Czernin.  But  that  does  not 
explain  how  you  came  in  possession  of  the  contents  of  the  note  and  these 
quotations,  which  are  verbatim.  I  take  it  for  granted  that  you  were  not 
shown  the  note  at  the  embassy  or  with  the  consent  of  Mr.  Penfield." 

All  of  which  was  very  true,  as  I  stated  to  the  Count.  The  chief  of 
the  private  cabinet  found  that  all  very  mystifying  until  I  told  him  that 
I  learned  of  the  note  and  its  contents  in  the  regular  manner  followed  by 
newspaper  men.  I  had  looked  for  a  reply  to  the  announcement  of  sub- 
marine warfare,  and  looking  for  it  had  found  it. 

But  where  had  I  found  it?  was  asked.  That  I  could  not  reveal,  of 
course,  I  stated.  At  any  rate  the  person  who  had  shown  me  the  note  had 
been  under  the  impression  that  no  wrong  was  being  done,  since  the  note 
would  be  published  anyway,  as  was  the  assumption  in  the  absence  of  other 
instructions. 

Count  Colloredo-Mannsf  eld  was  much  worried  in  regard  to  the  incident. 
He  said  that  the  choleric  "old  man"  in  the  United  States  embassy  would 
insist  that  the  matter  be  cleared  up,  and  that  the  Foreign  Office  would  have 
to  say  that  it  knew  nothing  of  the  thing  at  all.  I  advised  him  to  do 
that.  '         '  ^';'!^ 

But  that  would  bring  the  wrath  of  the  ambassador  upon  me.  That  was 
a  chance  I  would  take,  I  said.  But  the  Count  thought  it  best  that  I  state 
how  I  had  seen  the  note.  If  I  had  seen  it  in  the  Foreign  Office  it  might 
be  well  to  so  inform  Mr.  Penfield,  since  the  thing  could  be  explained  as  an 
unofficial  trespass. 

To  all  of  which  I  was  obliged  to  remain  obdurate  for  several  reasons. 
Whoever  the  person  was  who  had  shown  me  the  note,  I  would  have  to 
protect  him,  since  he  had  acted  in  good  faith,  as  I  had  done  myself. 
Neither  of  us  had  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  note  would  be  published,  and 
public  interest  demanded  that  it  be  published,  as  it  was.  Whether  the 
protest  came  from  Washington  or  originated  in  the  embassy  I  have  no 
means  of  knowing,  nor  is  that  germane  here. 

Strained  Personal  Diplomatic  Relations 

The  Sunday  following  this,  a  rather  interesting  contretemps  took  place 
at  the  residence  of  Mr.  Penfield,  the  leased  palatial  mansion  of  the  Roths- 
child family  in  the  Alleestrasse. 

Mr.  Penfield  was  completing  his  toilet  for  church  when  one  of  his 
servants  announced  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld. 

"Send  the  dirty  little  cur  away,"  said  the  ambassador.  "I  am  getting 
ready  to  go  to  church.    Ask  him  whether  he  hasn't  enough  common  sense 


346  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

about  him  not  to  disturb  a  gentleman  dressing  for  church.    Tell  him  to 
goto     .     .     ." 

The  servant  interpreted  this  as  best  he  could,  but  found  Count  Col- 
loredo-Mannsfeld  determined  to  see  the  august  American  ambassador.  The 
servant,  being  an  Austrian,  requested  the  caller  not  to  press  the  matter,  since 
it  would  be  useless.  In  reply  to  that,  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld  said  that 
he  had  come  to  ask  Mr.  Penfield  whether  he  would  not  have  the  kindness 
to  receive  Count  Czernin,  the  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  some  time  after 
lunch,  the  subject  to  be  considered  being  a  very  serious  one. 

Again  the  servant  went  to  Mr.  Penfield.  His  statement  of  the  case  was 
answered  with  expletives  even  worse,  and  finally  the  servant  felt  called 
upon  to  tell  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld  what  the  state  of  affairs  was.  As 
the  caller  got  into  his  automobile,  Mr.  Penfield  came  down  the  stairs  and 
was  off  to  church. 

The  matter  being  most  pressing,  Count  Czernin  called  on  Mr.  Penfield 
early  on  Monday  morning,  and  was  admitted  into  the  presence  of  the 
ambassador  a  few  minutes  before  I  arrived.  I  seated  myself  in  the  small 
foyer  of  the  embassy  and  waited  until  the  caller,  whose  identity  was  not 
then  known  to  me,  should  depart.  The  doorman,  a  person  by  name  of 
Franz,  had  told  me  that  there  was  somebody  with  the  ambassador,  but 
had  not  told  me  who  it  was. 

For  a  while  I  engrossed  myself  in  some  American  newspapers,  of 
which  there  was  always  a  liberal  stack  on  a  table,  and  then  I  became 
attracted  by  the  voice  of  Mr.  Penfield,  which  was  ringing  loudly  in  excite- 
ment, so  loudly  that  the  double-doors  of  his  office  could  not  prevent  my 
hearing  what  was  going  on. 

Not  wishing  to  hear  more  of  the  altercation  between  ambassador  and 
minister  of  foreign  affairs,  I  went  upstairs  to  see  a  Mr.  Harriman,  in 
connection  with  the  case  of  an  American  woman  whose  passport  had  been 
refused  extension  by  the  embassy.  The  case  had  been  brought  to  my  atten- 
tion, and,  since  I  considered  it  meritorious,  I  had  interested  myself  in 
behalf  of  the  woman — an  elderly  lady  in  poor  circumstances  who  years 
ago  had  decided  to  give  lessons  in  English  in  Vienna.  She  was  a  native 
American  and  now  anxious  to  return  to  the  United  States. 

After  a  while  I  decided  to  see  Mr.  Penfield,  and  was  readily  admitted. 
As  usual,  he  was  stabbing  the  arm-rest  of  his  chair  with  the  aviator's  arrow. 
He  was  greatly  excited,  and  could  hardly  wait  to  tell  me  what  had  happened. 

It  was  not  my  intention  to  refer  to  the  call  of  Count  Czernin,  and  I 
had  put  the  usual  question :  Whether  or  no  there  was  anything  new  in  the 
relations  between  the  United  States  and  Austria-Hungary. 

The  first  reply  was  just  as  stereotyped,  but  for  reasons  best  known 
to  Mr,  Penfield  he  began  to  relate  to  me  that  yesterday  he  had  been 


STRAINED  PERSONAL  DIPLOMATIC  RELATIONS      U7 

importuned  by  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld,  whom  he  labelled  an  "imper- 
tinent little  pup.'^  It  seemed  that  Mr.  Penfield  had  not  yet  recovered  from 
the  shock  of  being  interfered  with  while  making  his  toilet  for  church.  He 
wanted  to  know  what  my  opinion  of  that  sort  of  conduct  was.  I  replied 
that  there  were  times  when  such  things  were  perfectly  permissible,  so  far 
as  I  could  judge,  and  that  even  in  the  Good  Book  it  was  stated  that  on  the 
Sabbath  labors  of  love  and  those  called  for  by  necessity  were  permitted. 

"I  would  do  a  great  deal  for  these  Austrians,  if  they  could  make  up 
their  mind  to  quit  those  beastly  Germans.  But  I  know  they  won't  do  that. 
They  know  that  the  Germans  are  going  to  be  the  end  of  them,  but  they 
refuse  to  leave  their  ally  in  the  lurch — fine  ally — fine  ally  in  the  lurch. 

"That  is  what  this  thing  was  about.  That  is  why  that  impertinent 
little  puppy  interrupted  me  in  my  dressing  yesterday.  Well,  I  had  Count 
Czernin  at  my  feet  just  now — at  my  feet,  I  tell  you.  The  groveling, 
sniveling,  yellow  cur !  If  he  thinks  that  he  can  get  me  to  do  anything  for 
him  at  Washington,  he  is  mistaken.    I'll  see  them  all  in first. 

"Right  at  my  feet  I  had  the .    I  don't  care  what  happens.    Unless 

these  people  here  consent  to  quit  the  Germans  they  can  expect  but  one 
thing. 

"I  am  fond  of  these  Austrians.  Many  of  them  are  friends  of  mine. 
But  there  will  be  nothing  doing  until  they  get  out  of  that  alliance. 

"Mark  my  words.  I'll  show  them.  I'll  show  that  dirty  yellow  dog 
where  he  comes  off.  I've  shown  him  before,  I  have  shown  him  now,  I'll 
show  him  again — again — again. 

"O,  I  know  that  you  are  a  friend  of  theirs,  I  know  all  about  that.  But 
if  you  are  a  friend  of  theirs,  a  real  one,  you  will  do  them  a  favor  to  advise 

them  to  chuck  the  Germans,  and  do  it  quickly.     We'll  show  those  

where  they  come  off. 

"Wait  a  few  weeks  and  you'll  see.  I'll  see  to  it  that  you  get  a  berth 
on  my  special  train  out,  and  mark  you  I'll  pay  for  that  train  with  my  own 
money.      No   favors  to  me — not  to  Penfield — Penfield — ^Penfield  !" 

I  am  not  easily  impressed,  and  so  it  came  that  the  American  ambassador 
talked  for  the  purpose  of  impressing  me.  The  only  sensation  I  had,  how- 
ever, was  that  the  man  was  nervously  unstrung  and  not  in  that  moment 
accountable  for  his  conduct.  Only  the  day  before  he  had  referred  to  a 
loyal  citizen  of  the  United  States,  resident  of  Vienna,  as  an  "international 
crook." 

"Mr.  Ambassador,"  I  said,  "would  it  not  be  better  to  pour  a  little  oil 
on  these  troubled  waters?  Surely  such  efforts  deserve  better  than  that. 
You  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  both.  Count  Czernin  and  Count  Colloredo- 
Mannsfeld  are  gentlemen.  What  they  may  have  asked  you  to  do  was  at 
its  worst  their  duty.    Has  not  this  affair  gone  far  enough  without  dragging 


348  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  people  of  the  United  States  into  it?    There  are  two  sides  to  every 


issue 


"O,  that  is  what  they  all  say,"  broke  in  Mr.  Penfield  impatiently. 

"They  all  say  that.    I  have  secretaries  in  this office,  who  say  that. 

You  are  pro-German,  I  have  known  that  all  along — " 

"I  b^  to  differ  with  you,  Mr.  Ambassador,"  I  said,  interrupting  Mr. 
Penfield.  "I  am  nothing  of  the  sort.  If  you  need  classify  me  let  it  go 
with  humanitarian — " 

"I  suppose  that  as  Boer  you  are  anti-British,"  remarked  Mr.  Penfield 
with  a  sneer.  "Well,  there  are  other  Boers  who  are  not.  If  you  had  any 
sense  you'd  see  things  the  way  they  do.  What's  the  use  of  grieving  over 
a  lost  cause.  Let  me  tell  you,  my  boy,  that  you  are  on  the  wrong  track. 
To  be  anti-British  means  to  be  pro-German.  Always  remember  that — re- 
member that — ^that." 

I  asked  the  ambassador  what  his  evidence  was  that  I  was  hostile  to 
the  British.  He  could  not  say  that  he  had  any,  he  admitted,  but  took 
it  for  granted  that  just  because  I  had  been  on  the  side  of  the  Boer  Republics 
during  the  South  African  War,  and  was  not  now  enthusiastically  sympathe- 
tic for  the  British,  as  he  knew,  I  must  needs  be  anti-British  and  pro- 
German. 

When  I  left  Mr.  Penfield  he  was  still  gloating  over  the  insults  he  had 
offered  Count  Czernin,  and  I  was  still  wondering  into  what  hands  the  fate 
of  nations,  not  to  mention  the  lives  of  thousands  may  be  placed  for  the 
sake  of  a  political  campaign  contribution.  Truly,  I  was  disgusted.  Govern- 
ment seemed  to  me  more  than  ever  a  thing  of  hazard. 

What  Count  Czernin  wanted  Mr.  Penfield  to  do  may  just  as  well 
remain  a  state  secret,*  nor  will  I  dwell  upon  the  efforts,  which  were  even 


•  Reconsideration  has  induced  me  to  say  a  little  more  in  regard  to  this  matter. 

Through  a  neutral  diplomatic  mission  in  Washington,  Count  Czernin  had  finally  learned 
how  Count  Tarnowski  had  been  sent  to  the  United  States  as  ambassador.  Still,  not  every- 
thing was  clear.  I  was  invited  several  times  to  shed  light  on  the  affair,  but  could  not  do 
that,  owing  to  the  fact  that,  contrary  to  the  views  of  the  Department  of  State  and  its  stool- 
pigeons  in  Vienna,  I  was  minding  well  my  duties  as  a  citizen  of  the  United  States. 

Count  Czernin  had  found  it  impossible  to  set  his  mind  on  the  proper  track,  because  it 
never  occurred  to  him  that  Mr.  Penfield  could  have  engineered  the  appointment  of  Count 
Tarnowski  as  a  means  of  self-protection,  for  which  there  was  not  the  slightest  need.  Yet  the 
case  continued  to  puzzle  him.  To  get  the  information  he  desired,  which  in  fact  he  needed, 
to  keep  off  a   further  extension  of  the  War,   he   put  the  question  to    Mr.    Penfield   point-blank. 

The  United  States  ambassador  endeavored  to  evade  the  answer  that  was  sought,  but  Count 
Czernin,  being  a  man  of  great  ability,  succeeded  before  long  in  enmeshing  this  diplomatic  tyro 
hopelessly.  This  done.  Count  Czernin  charged  Mr.  Penfield  with  his  duplicity.  Again  Mr. 
Penfield  tried  to  clear  himself,  but  the  more  he  tried  the  deeper  he  floundered.  Finally,  the 
Austro-Hunearian  minister  of  the  Exterior  presented  to  the  United  States  ambassador  the 
critical  situation  he  had  created,  and  pointed  out  the  injustice  of  the  act.  He  did  that 
in  a  manner  wnich  caused  Mr.  Penfield  to  step  before  the  sofa,  next  to  the  desk,  from  where, 
with  his  right  hand  lifted,  as  in  taking  a  solemni  oath,  the  United  States  ambassador  said: 

"Mr.  Minister!  I  swear  before  God  Almighty  that  Count  Tarnowski  will  be  received  by  Mr. 
Wilson.  I  know  that  he  will  be  received.  That  he  has  not  yet  been  received  is  due  to  a  slight 
misunderstanding.      I  swear  that  he  will  be  received!" 

Count  Czernin  did  not  believe  even  this  and  inferred  that  in  a  diplomatic  manner.  Face 
to  face  with  a  man  who  had  come  to  learn  the  truth  so  that  he  might  do  what  was  still 
possible  to  save  the  situation,  Mr.  Penfield  fell  to  the  expedient  of  losing  his  temper,  the 
result  of  which  was  what  I  have  related  in  the  preceding  pages. 

The  oath  made  by  Mr,  Penfield  was  a  perjurious  one,  of  course,  because  the  ambassador 
had  by  that  time  in  his  possession  evidence  from  the  Department  of  State,  transmitted  to  him 


STRAINED  PERSONAL  DIPLOMATIC  RELATIONS      349 

then  made  by  the  State  Department,  to  wean  the  Austrians  and  Hungarians 
away  from  their  aUies,  the  Germans,  Bulgars  and  Turks.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  the  activity  of  the  Germans  in  the  United  States  was  the  merest 
buffonery  in  comparison  with  the  labors  to  bring  about  a  division  between 
the  Austro-Hungarians  and  the  Germans,  and  this  also  long  before  war  was 
declared  or  considered  imminent.  Already  in  the  spring  of  1915,  a  colleague 
of  mine,  charity  compels  me  not  to  give  his  name,  had  approached  Baron 
von  Montlong  along  those  lines,  suggesting  that  there  were  prospects  of 
immunity  for  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  if  it  broke  with  the 
Germans.  l       .  ».v  :  IS 

Washington  Clears  Deck  for  Action 

Count  Tarnowski  had  indeed  reached  Washington,  but  Mr.  Wilson 
found  it  unwise,  impolitic  and  unnecessary  to  carry  out  what  seemed  so 
very  proper  to  the  Austro-Hungarian  government,  to  wit:  Receive  the 
ambassador.  At  the  Foreign  Office  in  Vienna  they  used  to  ask  me  why 
this  should  be  so;  the  plea  of  ignorance  was  my  best  way  of  evading 
the  question,  when  a  word  could  have  explained  much,  and,  maybe,  changed 
the  situation  completely.  But  it  was  not  for  me  to  say  that  word,  even 
when  one  day  one  of  the  highest  in  the  land  insisted  that  for  the  sake 
of  humanity  I  throw  light  upon  the  situation  if  I  could. 

The  reception  given  Count  Czernin  had,  of  course,  ended  the  useful- 
ness of  the  American  ambassador.  Meanwhile,  it  had  been  harder  than 
ever  to  get  reliable  information  from  the  United  States.  The  Austro- 
Hungarian  charge  d'aif aires  in  Washington  was  of  a  sudden  entirely 
marooned,  it  seemed.  Yet  there  was  a  note  from  the  government  of  the 
United  States  that  demanded  an  explanation  of  Austria-Hungary's  conduct 
in  regard  to  the  renewal  of  submarine  warfare.  That  note  also  contained 
the  stated  and  implied  necessity  for  the  promptest  and  most  definite  answer. 
It  was  courteous  enough  in  terms,  but  also  very  ambiguous,  which  meant 
more  to  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  than  the  terms  themselves. 

As  already  stated  I  had  learned  the  contents  of  the  note  accidentally, 
as  it  were.  Later  I  was  shown  the  entire  text,  and  still  later  it  was 
published  in  Austria-Hungary.  At  the  Foreign  Office  they  did  not  know 
what  answer  to  make.  Evasion  of  any  sort  seemed  out  of  the  question.  On 
the  other  hand,  adhesion  to  Germany's  policy  in  submarine  matters  would 
either  have  to  be  confirmed  or  repudiated. 


in  cipher,  that  Count  Tarnowski  would  not  be  received  by  President  Wilson — in  fact  Mr. 
Lansing  was  even  then  of  the  opinion  that  it  would  be  best  to  get  the  Austro-Hungarian 
government  to  recall  Count  Tarnowski,  in  the  furthering  of  which  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  was  to   secure   for   Count  Tarnowski   safe   conduct   through   the   Allied   naval   lines. 

It  seems  superfluous  to  say  more  of  this.  Indeed  I  cite  the  case  only  to  show  what  dangers 
there  came  from  withdrawing  from  a  government  the  diplomatic  privileges  at  a  time  when  these 
very  same  privileges  were  enjoyed  by  the  embassy  of  the  United  States,  whose  chief  used 
them  for  the  most  astounding  diplomatic  malfeasance  on  record. — ^January  20th,  1920. 


350  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

On  several  occasions  I  had  been  asked  to  suggest  a  course  of  action. 
I  had  declined  to  g:ive  an  opinion  on  that,  on  the  ground  that  it  did  not 
concern  me  how  the  note  was  answered.  To  express  myself  one  way 
or  another  meant  to  assume  a  certain  amount  of  responsibility,  and  I  did 
not  want  to  assume  that. 

For  over  a  week  the  note  was  in  the  Vienna  Foreign  Office  and  no 
reply  was  in  sight.  Mr.  Penfield  made  inquiry  every  day,  and  toward  the 
last  became  very  insistent  in  the  manner  of  men  who  know  that  they 
have  the  upper  hand.  But  what  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  wanted 
was  anything  but  war  with  the  United  States,  nor  could  it  break  with 
Germany,  despite  the  fact  that  Prince  Sixtus  of  Bourbon,  brother  of  the 
Empress  Zita,  was  in  Vienna  incognito,  on  special  mission  from  the  Allied 
camp. 

Realizing  finally  that  there  might  yet  come  a  change  in  the  situa- 
tion, I  consented  to  give  advice  in  the  matter,  but  this  I  withdrew  before 
the  note  was  finished,  on  the  ground  that  meanwhile  the  political  aspect 
had  taken  a  different  hue  so  far  as  the  United  States  was  concerned. 

There  arrived  one  day  at  the  United  States  embassy  a  fairly  long 
cypher  cable  from  Mr.  Lansing.  One  part  of  it  was  brought  to  my  atten- 
tion by  Mr.  Penfield,  who  did  not  seem  to  know  what  he  was  to  do  under 
the  circumstances.  The  part  referred  to  said  that  the  Department  of  State 
deemed  it  well  to  have  Mr.  Penfield  return  to  the  United  States  immediately 
for  the  purpose  of  conferring  with  the  authorities  there  in  connection  with 
affairs  in  Central  Europe.  The  ambassador  would,  therefore,  arrange  his 
affairs  as  quickly  as  possible  and  come  home  without  delay. 

The  other  part  of  the  message  said  that  Mr.  Wilson  had  found  the 
presence  in  the  United  States  of  Count  Tarnowski  very  inconvenient,  and 
that  the  government  of  the  United  States  would  secure  safe  conduct  from 
the  Allied  governments  for  the  Austro-Hungarian  ambassador,  in  case 
the  Austro-Hungarian  would  deem  it  well  to  recall  Count  Tarnowski 
forthwith.  That  part,  of  course,  was  not  for  the  public,  though,  of  neces- 
sity it  had  to  be  submitted  to  Count  Czernin.  For  a  day  or  two  everything 
possible  was  done  by  all  concerned  to  find  a  different  solution  to  the 
matters  in  hand,  but  all  efforts  were  vain. 

Count  Czernin  had  left  it  to  Mr.  Penfield  to  acquaint  the  public  with 
his  proposed  departure.  It  was  his  opinion  that  if  the  news  came  from 
the  Austro-Hungarian  government,  as  was  inappropriate  anyway,  all  sorts 
of  interpretations  would  be  given  to  it  by  a  panicky  populace.  But  the 
American  ambassador  also  found  it  difficult  to  handle  the  situation.  The 
bubble  of  the  Tarnowski  appointment  had  now  burst.  The  Austro- 
Hungarian  government  swallowed  the  bitter  pill,  but  could  not  afford  to 
admit  that  it  had  been  fooled  by  Mr.  Penfield  into  the  belief  that  it  was 


WASHINCTON  CLEARS  DECKS  FOR  ACTION  351 

the  United  States  government  which  had  suggested  the  sending  of  an 
ambassador  to  Washington,  as  had  been  purposely  intimated  in  the  press. 

The  situation  being  a  complicated  one,  Mr.  Penfield  sent  for  me  and 
asked  that  I  prepare  a  statement  on  his  behalf  for  the  Austro-Hungarian 
press.  He  had  already  jotted  down,  with  a  thick  blue  pencil,  what  his 
ideas  were.  I  went  over  them  and  found  that  under  the  circumstances 
they  were  complete  enough. 

When  finally  the  statement  was  ready  for  dissemination,  it  said  that 
the  United  States  ambassador,  Mr.  Penfield,  would  either  on  April  4th 
or  5th  leave  Vienna  for  a  trip  to  the  United  States,  to  consult  with  the 
government  in  regard  to  the  situation  in  Europe,  to  rest  up  a  little  from 
the  exertions  on  his  post,  and  attend  to  private  affairs  which  had  been 
badly  neglected.     He  would  return  as  soon  as  possible. 

On  the  day  before  the  submission  to  Count  Czernin  by  Mr.  Penfield 
of  the  cablegram  from  the  State  Department,  it  had  been  learned  in  Vienna 
official  circles  that  the  United  States  government  had  recalled  its  minister 
to  Belgium,  Mr.  Brand  Whitlock,  and  the  American  Relief  Commission 
in  Belgium.  That  was  looked  upon  as  a  bad  sign.  The  Austro-Hungarian 
government  and  such  journalists  as  were  in  the  confidence  of  the  govern- 
ment felt  that  the  end  was  not  far  off. 

The  Penfield  announcement  appeared  first  in  the  Vienna  and  Budapest 
afternoon  papers.  All  night  long  I  was  besieged  at  my  hotel  by  Vienna 
newspaper  men  and  correspondents  of  the  papers  in  Budapest  and  the 
provinces,  who  wanted  to  get  information  I  could  not  give  them.  None 
would  believe  that  Mr.  Penfield  was  going  on  a  vacation  in  times  as 
critical  as  these  were.  All  insisted  that  war  with  the  United  States  was 
on,  but  that  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  was  afraid  to  admit  it. 
That  fear  of  theirs  I  could  allay.  There  was  no  war  yet.  An  editor  in 
Budapest  called  me  up  over  the  long  distance  telephone  and  offered  me 
five  thousand  crowns  if  I  would  write  him  so  much  as  a  single  sentence 
which  really  told  the  truth  about  conditions.  I  told  him  that  he  would 
not  believe  anyway  what  I  could  write  under  the  circumstances,  and  that 
he  would  be  wasting  his  money  if  he  expected  to  get  from  me  news  to  the 
effect  that  war  was  on  or  about  to  ensue. 

For  a  day  or  two  the  excitement  was  great  and  then  it  subsided  a 
little,  to  give  speculation  an  opportunity. 

I  had  known  for  some  time  what  would  happen  if  the  government  of 
the  United  States  declared  war  upon  Germany  and  not  on  Austria- 
Hungary,  as  some  believed.  Few  knew  that  Mr.  Wilson  had  long  ago 
made  up  his  mind  not  to  declare  war  upon  both  countries  at  the  same  time. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  there  were  in  Vienna  but  four  or  five  persons  who 
knew  that,  and  one  of   them   was   Count  Czernin,  the  minister  of  the 


352  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

exterior.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  had  agreed 
to  sever  diplomatic  relations  with  the  United  States  on  the  day  on  which 
the  government  of  the  latter  announced  that  either  a  state  of  war  existed, 
or  was  about  to  be  entered  upon,  with  Germany.  Mr.  Penfield  had  an 
inkling  of  this,  and  sounded  me  several  times,  which  was  useless  since 
I  collected  information  as  a  newspaper  man  and  not  as  diplomatist. 

Events  were  to  move  rapidly  very  soon.  On  April  2nd,  Mr.  Wilson 
asked  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  to  consider  that  a  state  of  war 
existed  between  the  United  States  and  Germany  and  take  the  necessary 
steps.  As  has  been  the  practice  in  such  cases  since  time  immemorial  the 
parliament  of  a  nation  was  confronted  with  a  fait  accompli  that  left  little 
opportunity  for  action  by  the  opposition.  The  gag  rule  in  the  Senate  had 
made  it  extremely  difficult  for  the  "willful"  ones  to  prevail,  and  public 
emotion  was  such  that  the  will  of  the  executive  was  bound  to  be  done. 

A  Diplomatist  in  Sore  Predicament 

Mr.  Penfield  had  intended  to  leave  Vienna  and  Austria-Hungary  on 
April  4th  or  5th,  but  he  finally  found  that  this  was  not  to  be.  He 
could  not  leave  Austria  very  well  without  paying  a  farewell  call  at  the 
Court  and  at  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs,  which  could  not  be  done 
in  time,  because  Emperor  Charles  and  Count  Czernin,  spent  Sunday, 
Monday,  Tuesday  and  Wednesday,  going  to,  staying  at,  and  coming  from 
German  great  general  headquarters  in  France,  where  a  conference  in  regard 
to  the  new  situation  was  in  progress.  Mr.  Penfield  would  have  to  wait 
until  Thursday,  before  the  Emperor  could  be  seen,  nor  was  it  feasible 
to  leave  Vienna  and  the  country  on  the  same  day.  The  following  day 
again  was  Good  Friday,  a  day  which  Mr.  Penfield  could  not  very  well 
pick  for  his  departure,  since  in  Austria-Hungary  that  is  one  of  the  great 
church  days,  and  the  American  ambassador,  as  a  good  Catholic,  had  to  bear 
that  in  mind. 

Before  proceeding,  I  will  reproduce  here,  in  its  original  form,  the  text 
of  a  news  dispatch  I  wrote  at  Berne  a  little  later,  in  which  the  last  days 
of  diplomatic  relations  between  Washington  and  Vienna  are  described  in 
"skeleton"  news  cablegram  form.  I  will  explain  also  that  the  copy  of  this 
dispatch  is  one  of  many  I  managed  to  get  past  the  French  border  authorities 
at  Pontarlier,  on  the  Swiss  border, 
"associated  paris 

"berne  april  sixteenth  austrohungarian  government  up  to  last 
minute  regretted  what  it  considered  necessity  severing  diplomatic 
relations  with  united  states  stop  though  austrohungarian  embassy 
in  Washington  had  been  instructed  demand  passports  in  case 
congress  declared  war  against  germany  or  decided  state  war  exist- 


A  DIPIvOMATIST  IN  SORE  PREDICAMENT  353 

ing  Vienna  foreign  office  hoped  that  break  could  be  avoided  stop 
remarkable  is  that  ambassador  penfields  departure  from  vienna 
not  in  any  way  directly  connected  with  steps  austrohungarian 
government  had  taken  for  breaking  relations  stop  last  week  am- 
bassador penfield  received  from  state  department  cable  to  effect  re- 
turn Washington  consult  with  president  wilson  regarding  general 
european  situation  taking  same  time  longneeded  rest  stop  penfields 
departure  also  was  eliminate  peculiar  situation  existing  since 
president  wilson  thought  it  inopportune  accept  tarnowskis  creden- 
tials stop  state  departments  intention  was  leave  vienna  embassy 
in  charge  counselor  grew  stop  when  ambassador  penfield  informed 
count  czernin  his  intention  leaving  he  was  given  for  first  time 
intimation  that  austrohungarian  government  intended  breaking 
relations  with  Washington  in  case  united  states  entered  war  state 
with  germany  stop  ambassador  informed  however  that  nothing 
would  be  done  pending  action  by  congress  stop  penfield  first 
planned  leaving  vienna  april  fourth  or  fifth  but  was  informed  he 
would  be  received  by  emperor  charles  on  april  fifth  emperor  and 
count  czernin  having  spent  first  three  days  that  week  at 
german  general  headquarters  stop  on  thursday  that  week  penfield 
was  received  by  emporor  but  same  evening  news  spread  that 
penfield  himself  would  be  given  passports  stop  news  appeared 
authentic  to  ambassador  who  unwilling  investigate  asked  associated 
correspondent  ascertain  if  report  true  or  not  stop  correspondent 
learned  from  highest  vienna  sources  that  austrohungarian  govern- 
ment did  not  intend  handing  penfield  passports  despite  fact  that 
congress  had  declared  state  war  existing  and  president  wilson 
having  signed  resolution  stop  in  effect  relations  been  severed 
however  so  that  associated  correspondent  became  virtually  inter- 
mediary between  american  ambassy  and  austrohungarian  govern- 
ment stop  vienna  government  made  all  needed  arrangements  for 
ambassadors  departure  and  to  last  moment  treated  him  as  dip- 
lomatist going  on  leave  stop  two  representatives  vienna  foreign 
office  came  to  station  see  penfield  couple  off  handing  mistress 
penfield  in  name  austrohungarian  government  splendid  floral  gifts 
stop  on  Saturday  april  seventh  associated  correspondent  unofficially 
authorized  presented  at  vienna  foreign  office  arguments  against 
planned  rupture  diplomatic  relations  but  was  informed  that  other 
engagements  made  any  other  course  impossible  stop  what  these 
arrangements  were  associated  did  not  learn  but  seemingly  they 
were  of  great  binding  force  stop  certain  is  that  austrohungarian 
government  not  moved  by  malice  following  most  likely  necessity 
alleged  existing  which  semiofficial  vienna  fremdenblatt  on  april 
tenth  outpointed  in  leader  as  being  that  with  diplomatic  relations 
between  Washington  and  vienna  intact  and  intercourse  between 
embassy  and  statedepartment  unchecked  certain  military  informa- 
tion likely  hurt  germany  might  get  to  american  government  stop 
towards  very  last  austrohungarian  government  was  loath  exert  in 
any  way  control  over  american  diplomatic  communications  stop 
charge  daffaires  grew  was  handed  passports  eastersunday  at  two 


354  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

fifteen  minutes  afternoon  but  news  suppressed  until  following 
tuesday  stop  vienna  population  which  had  hoped  see  rupture 
avoided  accepted  announcement  greatest  calm  stop  no  demonstra- 
tions against  americans  occured  stop  to  very  last  authorities 
treated  americans  with  unusual  consideration  waiving  for  their 
benefit  nearly  all  passport  and  baggage  regulations  stop  in  austro- 
hungarian  government  circles  rupture  not  popular  but  outcarried 
only  for  reasons  stated  stop  in  hungarian  diet  government  was 
attacked  by  opposition  for  having  broken  relations  but  statement 
from  government  quieted  tisza  opponents  quickly  stop  nowhere  in 
monarchy  could  antagonism  toward  united  states  be  found  which 
true  also  in  highest  military  circles  and  various  ministries  stop 
that  diplomatic  relations  had  be  severed  caused  in  short  universal 
regret  stop  associated  correspondent  in  position  to  announce  on 
highest  austrohungarian  authority  that  monarchy  does  not  con- 
template declaring  war  on  united  states  being  willing  to  leave  all 
further  developments  in  hand  american  government  stop  nothing 
placed  in  way  grew  and  staffs  departure  for  reason  that  vienna 
government  felt  that  no  guarantees  regarding  austrohungarian 
diplomatists  and  staff  in  Washington  would  be  needed  stop 
schreiner." 

The  news  as  it  is  written  is  hardly  ever  complete.  Technical  limits 
in  news  transmission  must  be  considered,  and  that  means  brevity.  In  this 
case  I  was  not  able  to  tell  the  whole  story,  because  of  its  political  character. 
My  statement  that  on  Thursday  the  news  was  spread  that  Mr.  Penfield 
would  be  given  his  passport,  and  that  this  news  "appeared  authentic"  must 
be  explained,  as  must  also  the  statement  that  the  ambassador  "unwilling" 
to  "investigate"  asked  the  Associated  Press  correspondent,  myself,  to 
ascertain  if  the  report  was  true  or  not.  Elucidation  of  several  other  pas- 
sages in  my  dispatch  will  come  in  connection  with  this. 

On  Thursday  morning  I  made  the  usual  round  of  the  Vienna  Foreign 
Office.  At  one  place  I  was  told  that  a  certain  official  wanted  to  see  me 
very  urgently.  My  hotel  had  been  called  up  several  times,  but  it  had  been 
impossible  to  find  me  there.  The  official  who  delivered  this  message 
seemed  so  much  excited  that  I  began  to  fear  for  the  worst.  To  live 
forever  with  a  rupture  of  diplomatic  relations  and,  possibly,  war,  over 
one's  head  is  one  of  the  best  means  I  know  for  keeping  one's  mind  alert. 

I  found  the  official  quickly  enough.  What  was  the  matter  ?  Well,  the 
prospect  was  a  very  bad  one.  From  reliable  quarters — a  neutral  diplo- 
matic mission  in  Washington — ^news  had  come  that  a  state  of  war  with 
Germany  would  be  declared  as  existing  by  Congress  within  hours.  There 
was  nothing  else  to  do  but  to  prepare  Mr.  Penfield  for  the  unavoidable. 
The  American  ambassador  and  Mrs.  Penfield  had  done  so  much  for  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Red  Cross  and  the  poor  of  Vienna  (before  the  sinking 
of  the  Lusitania)  that  it  was  felt  at  the  Foreign  Office  no  more  than  proper 


A  DIPLOMATIST  IN  SORE  PREDICAMENT  365 

that  Mr.  Penfield  should  get  an  intimation  of  the  impending  rupture  of 
diplomatic  relations. 

Would  I  tell  Mr.  Penfield  that  it  was  likely  that  he  would  get  his 
passports  that  evening  or  the  following  morning,  if  news  came  by  that  time 
that  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  had  complied  with  the  wishes  of 
Mr.  Wilson.  There  seemed  to  be  no  way  out  of  it.  While,  with  all  his 
shortcomings,  Mr.  Penfield  had  been  a  very  good  friend  of  the  Austro- 
Hungarians,  it  might  become  necessary  to  hand  him  his  papers  before  he 
would  have  had  time  to  leave  the  country  still  an  accredited  ambassador. 

I  went  immediately  to  the  office  quarters  of  the  embassy  at  No.  9 
Wohleben  Casse,  to  find  that  Mr.  Penfield  would  not  be  in  during  the 
day — that  he  was  very  busy  making  his  farewell  calls.  Mr.  Joseph  C. 
Grew  had  already  taken  over  the  affairs  of  the  post  as  charge  d'affaires. 
Since  I  had  most  pressing  duties  of  my  own  to  attend  to,  I  left  word 
in  a  quarter  where  it  would  reach  Mr.  Penfield,  if  he  should  drop  in 
meanwhile. 

The  Aftermath  of  a  Diplomatic  Tea 

I  had  for  that  afternoon  accepted  an  invitation  to  tea  at  the  residence 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Penfield.  I  had  accepted  others  before,  but  had  always 
been  prevented  from  going  there.  The  late  afternoon  was  the  best  hour 
to  see  the  officials  in  the  Foreign  Office.  There  was  no  longer  any  need 
of  seeing  them,  because  I  had  been  informed  that  I  would  not  be  able 
to  use  the  wires  any  more.  The  telegraph  system  of  the  country  was  in 
the  hands  of  the  military,  and  the  gentlemen  of  that  calling  do  not  mince 
matters  when  a  crisis  is  near.  Moreover,  I  had  to  see  Mr.  Penfield  in  con- 
nection with  my  "diplomatic"  mission. 

The  tea  party  was  well  in  progress  when  I  arrived.  Those  around  the 
huge  round  table  in  one  of  the  salons  were  enjoying  themselves.  Mrs. 
Penfield  presided  in  very  happy  fashion,  and  a  member,  by  marriage,  of  the 
Imperial  family,  was  just  recounting  how  she  had  succeeded  in  getting  milk 
for  her  infant  son.  I  interrupted  the  interesting  story  by  my  entrance  but 
caught  the  threads  of  it  later  on. 

It  seems  that  the  princess  had  some  time  ago  caught  the  happy  idea 
of  keeping  somewhere  in  the  country  a  good  cow,  the  milk  of  which  made 
up  most  of  the  food  of  her  young  son.  There  was  no  longer  any  other 
way  of  getting  milk  in  Vienna  and  even  this  was  made  impossible.  The 
authorities  were  now  in  the  habit  of  seizing  for  uniform  distribution  all 
the  milk  that  was  brought  into  the  city,  and  in  this  manner  the  young 
scion  of  Parma  and  Hapsburg  had  to  get  along  on  the  same  ration  as  the 
child  of  a  hodcarrier  in  the  Ottackring  District.  The  ladies  and  gentlemen 
at  the  table  found  that  shocking  enough.    Why,  the  idea ! 


356  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Well,  the  enterprising  young  princess  had  appealed  to  her  connection, 
Emperor  Charles,  but  he  had  told  her  that  there  was  nothing  he  could  do. 
As  the  result  of  this  the  princess  had  now  sent  her  son  to  where  the  cow 
was — quite  a  distance  from  Vienna,  as  I  recall  it.  All  that  was  droll 
enough,  and  everybody  laughed.  The  princess  had  told  that  story  before, 
I  think.    At  any  rate  she  told  it  well  and  with  relish. 

Among  the  others  who  were  present  were  Mr.  Grew,  the  chargS 
d'affaires;  Mr.  Hugh  R.  Wilson,  a  second  secretary,  and  Mrs.  Wilson; 
Mr.  Allen  W.  Dulles,  also  a  second  secretary,  and  another  attache  of  the 
embassy. 

Conversation  moved  entirely  in  the  sphere  of  food  and  nutrition.  Mrs. 
Penfield  dwelt  with  much  enthusiasm  on  the  farm  she  was  running  for 
her  own  household  needs  and  which  during  her  absence  would  be  run  by 
Emin  Pasha.  Food  was  high,  she  said.  She  found  it  hard  to  understand 
how  people  lived  at  all  nowadays,  and  I  was  asked  to  explain  how  it  was 
done.  When  I  told  the  company  that  quite  recently  I  had  not  seen  a  piece 
of  bread  for  a  week,  but  had  subsisted  entirely  on  potatoes,  a  small  portion 
of  meat  and  canned  vegetables,  they  found  it  hard  to  understand  that. 

Uncle  Sam  was  taking  good  care  of  his  diplomatists  abroad.  The 
army  quartermaster's  department  saw  to  it  that  the  diplomatists  and  their 
families  were  well  provided  with  food,  sending  to  Vienna  such  things 
as  were  needed  to  make  life  agreeable — anything  from  a  can  of  the  finest 
olive  oil  to  a  barrel  of  flour,  from  juiciest  California  preserved  fruits  to 
a  side  of  bacon  or  a  bag  of  choicest  Mocca ;  all  of  them  things  which  we 
plain,  everyday  American  civilians  could  not  get,  though  our  work,  at 
least  mine,  was  as  important  to  the  public  of  the  United  States  as  that 
of  any  member  of  the  embassy  staff. 

The  conversation  was  rather  animated  when  suddenly  the  large  double 
door  was  flung  open,  and  the  tall  figure  of  Mr.  Penfield  appeared  in  its 
frame.  He  beckoned  to  me  in  a  somewhat  excited  manner,  and  then 
withdrew  again  without  greeting  the  ladies.  I  begged  to  be  excused  and 
followed  him,  being  in  my  turn  followed  by  Messrs.  Grew,  Wilson  and 
Dulles. 

When  I  reached  the  foyer,  a  sort  of  spacious  stair  landing,  Mr.  Penfield 
was  sitting  on  an  ottoman,  and  beside  him  was  standing  an  attache  of  the 
embassy.    The  ambassador  was  very  much  excited. 

"What  is  that— what  is  that  ?  I'm  to  get  my  passports  in  the  morning. 
Is  it  true — is  it  true?"  he  panted. 

"Unfortunately,  Mr.  Ambassador !"  I  said.  "That  is  to  say,  if  Congress 
declares  that  a  state  of  war  exists  between  the  United  States  and  Germany. 
It  has  not  done  that  yet." 

"But  it  will  do  it— it  will  do  it,"  said  Mr.  Penfield,  trying  hard  to 


THE  AFTERMATH  OF  A  DIPLOMATIC  TEA  357 

get  his  nerves  under  control.  "Well,  I  won't  leave  this  country  in  that 
fashion.  I  have  done  too  much  for  these  people  to  deserve  such  treat- 
ment. I  have  fed  them,  clothed  them.  Mrs.  Penfield  had  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  wound  dressings  made  for  them  in  her  shop." 

There  was  nothing  I,  or  any  of  the  others,  could  say  to  that.  The 
secretaries — at  least  two  of  whom  had  prayed  for  this  day — were  them- 
selves a  little  ill  at  ease  before  the  discomfiture  of  their  chef  de  mission. 
I  found  it  hard  to  understand  why  Mr.  Penfield  should  tell  us  all  this. 

"Listen,  now !"  started  the  ambassador  again.  "I  tell  you,  I  will  not 
leave  this  country  a  dismissed  ambassador!  I  want  you  to  go  up  to  the 
Foreign  Office  and  tell  them  that  they  must  delay  the  rupture  of  diplomatic 
relations  until  I  am  out  of  the  country,  which  will  be  Sunday  noon.  Go 
up  there  and  tell  them,  before  it  is  too  late." 

"I  am  afraid  that  my  word  won't  count  with  them,  Mr.  Ambassador !" 
I  said. 

"O,  yes,  it  will.  I  know  it  will !"  broke  in  Mr.  Penfield.  "They  think 
a  great  deal  of  you  up  there.  Go  and  see  them.  I  tell  you  that  can't  happen. 
Tell  them  to  wait  until  I  am  gone.  Give  me  my  passports — my  pass- 
ports    .      .      ." 

(Mr.  Penfield  buried  his  face  in  his  hands  and  began  to  stare  at  the 
carpet.  I  was  irresolute.  What  chances  had  I  warding  ofiF  an  action  of 
that  nature. 

"I  am  afraid,  Mr.  Ambassador,  it  will  be  quite  useless,"  I  said. 

"No,  it  won't  be.  You  can  do  it,"  insisted  Mr.  Penfield.  "They  have 
a  very  high  opinion  of  you  up  there.    Go  and  do  it !" 

Mr.  Grew  also  began  to  urge  me,  as  did  several  of  the  others.  A  little 
later  I  was  closeted  with  some  of  the  Foreign  Office  officials. 

I  presented  the  matter  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  pointing  out  that 
it  would  be  better  to  defer  the  rupture  of  diplomatic  relations  long  enough 
to  allow  Mr.  Penfield  to  get  over  the  border  into  Switzerland.  I  finally 
left  with  the  assurance  that  Mr.  Penfield  would  be  permitted  to  leave 
Vienna  and  Austria  an  accredited  ambassador. 

To  the  night  train  for  Feldkirch,  on  the  following  Saturday,  was 
attached  a  special  car  for  Ambassador  and  Mrs.  Penfield,  who  were  ac- 
companied by  Mr.  Dulles,  nephew  of  Secretary  of  State  Lansing,  and 
a  valet  and  maid.  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld,  not  especially  beloved  by 
Mr.  Penfield,  and  another  attache  of  the  Foreign  Office,  came  to  the  station 
with  floral  gifts  for  Mrs.  Penfield,  and  the  official  farewell  for  the 
ambassador. 

I  noticed  that  everybody  present  wore  a  black  overcoat  and  a  high 
silk  hat,  as  they  do  at  high-class  funerals.  And  this,  certainly,  was  one 
of  them.    The  stafif  of  the  embassy  had  put  in  appearance  in  full  force  to 


358  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

sec  off  their  chief,  and  there  was  in  evidence  a  certain  amount  of  hilarity 
that  did  not  fit  into  the  event.  Count  Colloredo-Mannsfeld  made  a  few 
formal  remarks  to  the  ambassador,  while  the  other  man,  Count  Forgatch, 
I  believe,  presented  the  floral  oflferings  to  Mrs.  Penfield. 

I  watched  the  performance  from  the  philosophical  tower  I  frequent 
on  such  occasions  and  wondered  just  how  much  further  fiction  and  simula- 
tion could  get  from  reality.  I  must  record  that  it  went  the  whole  distance. 
That  somewhere  there  were  young  men  who  would  soon  bleed  on  some 
battlefield  and  rest  in  a  company  grave  as  the  result  of  diplomacy  did  not 
seem  to  occur  to  any  of  those  departing,  or  those  seeing  the  departing 
off. 

Diplomatic  Negotiations  Under  Difficulties 

On  Saturday  morning  Mr.  Grew  called  me  into  his  office.  He 
also  had  an  errand  for  me.  I  was  to  go  to  the  Foreign  Office  and  argue 
for  an  indefinite  postponement  of  the  proposed  rupture  of  relations.  It 
was  the  opinion  of  the  charge  d'affaires  that  everything  possible  ought  to 
be  done  to  prevent  a  break.  I  was  of  that  mind  myself — ^had  been  for 
weeks  before  Mr.  Grew  arrived  from  Berlin,  where  he  had  been  the 
counselor  of  Mr.  James  W.  Gerard,  who  was  now  being  interviewed  twice 
a  day  by  the  journalists  of  France,  violating  thereby  every  rule  of  diploma- 
tic etiquette. 

To  present  that  matter  for  Mr.  Grew  was  not  easy,  I  concluded. 
Because  the  cliarge  d'affaires  had  been  in  the  American  embassy  at  Berlin 
he  was  looked  upon  with  suspicion.  He  was  the  very  man,  owing  entirely 
to  his  former  station,  who  should  not  have  been  sent  to  Vienna,  if  the 
State  Department  hoped  to  keep  up  diplomatic  relations  with  Vienna,  as 
it  had  undoubtedly  instructed  Mr.  Grew,  before  he  came  to  his  new  post. 

The  conversation  with  the  charge  d'affaires  established  that  he  had 
the  best  of  intentions.  He  felt  that  the  American  embassy  at  Vienna 
might  later  on  serve  as  a  bridge  by  which  negotiations  with  the  German 
government  might  be  renewed,  if  the  occasion  should  come.  On  that 
point  I  was  to  lay  great  stress.  I  suggested  to  Mr.  Grew  that  he  be  a 
little  more  specific  as  to  his  authority  in  the  premises.  Was  I  to  make  the 
representations  officially,  semi-officially  or  unofficially?  But  on  that  point 
I  could  not  get  Mr.  Grew  to  commit  himself  at  first.  I  told  him  that 
unless  I  could  fix  my  own  status  I  could  not  very  well  take  the  matter 
up.  When  finally  I  saw  that  Mr.  Grew  had  specific  instructions.  I  de- 
cided to  see  what  I  could  do. 

I  had  two  conferences  in  the  Foreign  Office  that  day.  One  of  them 
led  to  a  conference  elsewhere.  I  argued  the  case  as  best  I  could,  but  found 
a  great  stumbling  block  in  the  fact  that  I  was  not  able  to  say  more  than 


DIPLOMATIC  NEGOTIATIONS  UNDER  DIFFICULTIES    359 

that  the  charge  d'affaires  was  my  authority.  If  I  could  point  out  in  what 
the  advantages  of  the  continuation  of  diplomatic  relations  lay  for  Austria- 
Hungary,  aside  from  the  fact  that  the  Vienna  embassy  of  the  United  States 
might  offer  a  convenient  means  for  possible  negotiations  between  Washing- 
ton and  Berlin,  my  case  would  have  a  much  better  standing,  I  was  told. 

But  to  point  out  such  advantages  was  not  easy,  especially  since  a  great 
number  of  negatives  had  to  be  overcome.  I  was  frankly  told  that  the 
only  reason  why  diplomatic  relations  were  being  severed  lay  in  the  con- 
clusion on  the  part  of  the  Central  Power  governments  that  the  American 
embassy  at  Vienna  had  been  used  by  sympathizers  of  the  Allies  in  the 
Dual  Monarchy,  Czechs,  Poles,  Croats  and  Italians,  as  a  clearing  house 
for  military  information  going  both  ways.  A  former  unofficial  attache 
of  the  embassy  and  his  wife  were  openly  charged  with  having  been 
the  agents  of  Allied  governments,  and  worse  than  that  was  intimated. 

"The  difference  between  the  Austro-Hungarian  and  United  States 
governments  is  that  we  do  not  howl  to  the  four  winds  in  such  matters," 
said  an  official.  "We  happen  to  know  that  some  of  the  reports  of  the  United 
States  consuls  and  consular  attaches  have  contained  matter  of  a  character 
detrimental  to  the  public  interests  of  the  Monarchy.  The  reports  were 
forwarded  via  London  and  Paris. 

"What  assurance  have  we  that  this  will  not  be  done  in  the  future,  if 
we  do  not  sever  diplomatic  relations  ?  The  only  way  to  prevent  that  would 
be  to  treat  your  embassy  here  as  ours  was  treated  in  Washington,  and 
that  we  will  not  do.  We  have  given  the  government  of  the  United  States 
the  assurance  that  during  this  War  its  diplomatic  dispatches  and  mail 
pouches  will  be  inviolable.  We  do  not  care  to  go  back  on  our  word.  If 
that  assurance  is  cancelled  it  will  be  cancelled  in  the  only  way  hitherto 
provided  for  by  international  usage:    A  rupture  of  relations." 

It  seemed  that  there  was  no  way  out  of  this.  The  embassy  could  not 
remain  without  everything  it  did  being  subjected  to  Austro-Hungarian 
scrutiny.  It  would  not  be  able  either  to  receive  or  send  a  single  dispatch 
or  letter  in  cypher.  Under  those  circumstances  it  would  be  best  to  have 
Austro-Hungarian  interests  in  the  United  States  presented  by  some  neutral 
legation  and  vice  versa. 

Mr.  Grew  regretted  very  much  that  I  had  not  been  more  successful. 
On  the  following  day,  Easterday  in  the  most  Catholic  country  in  Europe, 
at  2 :15  p.  m.,  when  Mr.  Penfield  was  well  over  the  border,  representatives 
of  the  Foreign  Office  handed  Mr.  Grew  the  passports  of  the  embassy  in 
his  private  quarters  in  the  new  Hotel  Bristol. 

On  the  following  Saturday  evening,  April  14th,  the  diplomatic  and 
consular  staff  of  the  State  Department  left  Vienna  on  the  same  train  which 
Mr.  Penfield  had  taken.    Such  was  the  end  of  diplomatic  relations  between 


360  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  United  States  of  America  and  the  oldest  empire  in  Europe— legitimate 
child  of  the  Caesars  of  Rome. 

Diplomatists  and  Plain  Citizens 

This  account  can  not  very  well  be  closed  without  some  reference  to 
the  callous  conduct  of  the  United  States  embassy  toward  American  citizens 
whom  the  rupture  of  relations  left  stranded  in  what  might  at  any  moment 
become  an  enemy  country.  With  the  exception  of  two  secretaries,  Messrs. 
Rutherford  Bingham  and  Glenn  Stewart,  scant  consideration  was  shown 
American  citizens  by  members  of  the  embassy  staff.  The  few  who  managed 
to  get  on  the  embassy  train,  three  coaches  attached  to  the  regular  night 
train  for  Feldkirch,  got  there  largely  because  of  their  prominence  or  my 
friendship.  All  others  were  left  behind  to  shift  for  themselves.  While  T 
could  mention  a  good  many  such  cases  I  will  make  reference  only  to  one, 
because  it  had  a  peculiar  significance  under  the  circumstances. 

There  arrived  in  Vienna  a  Mrs.  Judelsohn,  mother  of  Mr.  Montefiore 
Judelsohn,  a  student  interpreter  at  the  United  States  embassy  at  Constan- 
tinople. Mrs.  Judelsohn  was  not  in  the  best  of  health  and  needed  the 
care  of  an  elderly  Armenian  woman,  who  was  in  her  service  for  that 
purpose.  The  Armenian  woman  claimed  American  citizenship  by  marriage, 
I  was  informed.  At  any  rate  on  credentials  given  her  in  Constantinople 
she  had  been  able  to  travel  as  far  as  Vienna.  Even  the  Argus-eyed 
Bulgarian  frontier  officials  had  permitted  her  to  pass,  and  after  that  she 
had  run  the  gauntlet  of  the  three  military  railroad  administrations  of 
occupied  Serbia. 

All  had  gone  well  until  the  two  women  reached  the  American  embassy 
at  Vienna.  Here  a  vise  was  refused  the  Armenian.  In  some  manner 
Mrs.  Judelsohn  heard  of  me,  called  and  spoke  of  her  plight.  Though 
she  was  the  mother  of  a  member  of  the  service,  she  was  unable  to  get  her 
nurse  through.  She  could  not  travel  without  the  woman,  and  would 
not  leave  her  behind  if  she  could.  I  was  to  help  her.  At  the  American 
embassy  I  was  refused. 

A  request  at  the  Foreign  Office  and  the  War  Department  finally  secured 
for  the  woman  permission  to  leave  Austria-Hungary  without  the  vise. 
I  came  home  that  night  and  found  in  my  room  a  little  round  package.  It 
contained  nine  crackers,  which  the  Armenian  woman  sent  me  to  show 
her  appreciation.   Nine  crackers  were  not  to  be  valued  lowly  in  those  days. 

But  the  best  example  of  how  a  solicitous  United  States  Department 

of  State  will  protect  United  States  citizens,  I  had  in  France.   At  Pontarlier, 

'the  kind  border  officials  marched  a  party  of  American  citizens,  among  them 

.  six  women  and  a  young  girl,  from  one  place  of  inspection  to  another  for 


DIPLOMATISTS  AND  PLAIN  CITIZEN  361 

the  greater  part  of  a  day,  through  streets  that  were  covered  with  thawing 
snow  to  the  depth  of  six  inches.  At  the  office  of  the  military  frontier 
surrveyor  these  women,  two  of  them  American  Red  Cross  nurses  from 
Sofia,  and  two  others,  wife  and  daughter  of  an  American  missionary 
stationed  at  Prague,  were  Hned  up  for  a  cross-examination  in  regard  to 
conditions  in  Bulgaria  and  Austria  that  was  not  the  nicest  thing  to  behold. 
When  it  came  to  be  my  turn,  the  French  captain,  not  a  bad  sort,  by  the 
way,  thought  a  prize  had  been  captured. 

— Bh,  bien,  vous  etes  correspondent  .  .  .  vous  aves  visitt  le 
front  d'Isonzo  recemment,  il  parrait, — he  said. 

Well  versed  in  his  business,  the  man  had,  after  looking  pensively  at 
the  legend  "Vient  d'Autriche,"  written  with  red  ink  and  large  lettering 
across  the  vise  on  my  passport  of  the  French  consulate  general  at  Berne, 
found  quickly  a  number  of  Austrian  military  visees  done  at  Tolmein, 
Laibach,  Adelsberg  and  Triest. 

I  admitted  that  I  had  been  on  the  Julian  front  quite  recently.  As  the 
result  of  that  I  was  invited  to  be  seated.  The  officer  armed  himself  with 
a  shorthand  pad  and  began  to  scribble  in  stenography.  This  done  he  began 
to  ply  me  with  questions  of  a  character  intended  to  bring  out  what  military 
information  I  might  have.  He  wanted  to  know  what  the  morale  of  the 
Austro-Hungarian  troops  was.  I  said  that  I  was  no  psychologist.  What 
was  the  number  of  the  new  big  Skoda  howitzers  from  the  Hermada  to  the 
Stol  Mountain  ?  I  did  not  know.  Had  I  seen  any  of  them  ?  I  had.  How 
far  were  these  guns  behind  the  infantry  position  on  an  average?  I  had 
not  measured  the  distance. 

"It  would  seem  to  me  that  you  are  averse  to  giving  me  the  information 
I  desire,"  said  the  man  finally. 

"I  am  averse  to  that,"  I  remarked  frankly. 

"But  why  should  you  be?    You  are  now  one  of  our  allies." 

"Not  yet  against  the  Austrians!"  I  ventured  to  remark. 

"What  difference  is  there — Boche  and  Austrian  are  the  same!" 

"Not  to  me,  monsieur!" 

"Voyons! — What  is  the  use  of  splitting  hairs?" 

"I  hope  that  the  French  general  staff  does  not  place  too  great  a  weight 
on  military  information  collected  in  this  manner.  I  have  had  a  little 
military  experience  and  know  enough  of  the  business  to  answer  your 
questions  in  such  a  manner  that  the  result  might  be  injurious  to  your 
cause,  as  you  put  it.  I  can  state  numbers,  calibers  and  distances.  But 
what  assurance  have  you  that  I  have  given  you  the  correct  data?" 

A  frown  went  over  the  officer's  face. 

"We  could  hold  you  responsible  in  that  event,"  he  said  tersely 

"For  what?" 


362  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

"For  giving  us  false  information." 

"That  is  very  ingenious,  monsieur T  I  said.  "Do  you  not  think  that 
the  government  of  the  United  States  might  have  something  to  say  in 
that?" 

The  officer  laughed. 

"So  far  as  the  United  States  government  is  concerned  we  have  a 
free  hand.    On  that  you  need  not  count." 

**That  means  that  the  United  States  government  will  do  nothing  for 
its  citizens  when  under  such  conditions  they  might  get  into  trouble  in  this 
country  ?" 

"If  you  want  to  put  it  that  way,"  remarked  the  officer,  pleasantly. 
"You  have  said  enough  even  now  to  warrant  your  arrest  and  detention." 

"Why?" 

"It  is  plainly  to  be  seen  that  you  are  a  sympathizer  at  least  of  the 
Austrians,"  was  the  reply. 

"There  is  nothing  to  be  seen,  monsieur,  except  that  I  am  a  person  who 
does  not  violate  hospitality.  I  have  been  the  guest  of  the  several  Central 
Powers  countries  for  three  years  and  feel  that  I  must  be  fair  to  them. 
How  would  you  like  it  if  a  war  correspondent,  who  had  been  in  your 
country  and  with  your  armies,  went  over  into  Germany  and  peddled  his 
stock  of  information?" 

Monsieur  thought  it  over  for  a  while. 

"I  think  I  understand  you.    I  beg  your  pardon!" 

That  afternoon  he  came  to  the  train  to  see  the  party  off.  He  was 
especially  cordial  to  me. 

"Such  matters,  unfortunately,  are  one  of  the  unpleasant  side  issues 
of  war.     I  hope  that  you  will  overlook  the  incident.     Au  revoirf" 

At  the  prefecture  in  Paris  an  official  nearly  lost  his  mind  when  I 
presented  my  passport  with  the  legend  "Vient  d'Autriche"  and  a  German 
name.  Jamais — jamais  de  la  vie — was  I  to  get  a  permit  de  sejour,  not 
even  for  a  day.  I  would  have  to  leave  France  that  evening  or  land 
in  trouble.  That  I  had  not  been  able  to  make  in  four  or  five  hours 
arrangements  for  sailing  did  not  concern  French  securite  puhlique.  I  went 
to  the  American  embassy,  where  a  suave  and  gentle-spoken  secretary  looked 
at  my  passport  a  long  time  and  then  regretted  that  he  could  do  nothing. 
The  best  thing  to  do  would  be  to  take  a  train  for  Spain  and  hope  to  get 
a  steamer  from  there. 

"You  come  from  Austria,  I  notice,"  said  the  man  with  a  voice  as  soft 
as  the  beat  of  an  owl's  wings.  "That  is  bad !  We  can't  do  anything  for 
you.  Better  take  my  advice  and  get  out  of  Paris  and  France.  You  have 
a  German  name — that  is  always  dangerous.  And  then  you  were  not  even 
born  in  the  United  States.    You  have  quite  an  accent,  I  notice.    Too  bad ! 


DIPLOMATISTS  AND  PLAIN  CITIZEN  363 

But  there  is  nothing  we  can  do  for  you.    May  be  that  your  bureau  here 
would  fix  up  the  matter.     If  you  should  get  into  trouble  let  us  know." 

They  were  prepared  for  my  coming  at  Hendaye,  on  the  Spanish  border. 
A  large  tome  was  produced,  and  in  it  two  French  frontier  officials  read 
a  long  time.  On  this  occasion  I  did  not  know  any  French.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  hear  what  they  had  to  say,  I  thought.  But  their  remarks 
were  only  professionally  interesting.  He  is  a  newspaper  correspondent, 
connected  with  the  somewhat  official  Associated  Press  of  America.  The 
censorship  has  found  it  necessary  to  suppress  a  great  deal  of  his  matter, 
it  would  seem — ^there  are  several  entries  of  that  type.  It  is  strange  that 
there  is  not  yet  a  report  from  the  point  of  his  entry  into  France,  though 
it  seems  that  he  made  application  in  Paris  for  permission  to  stay  longer 
than  is  allowed  travellers  in  transit.  He  looks  to  me  a  man  of  unfriendly 
allure — what  shall  we  do?  I  am  not  fond  of  detaining  journalists. 
Generally,  they  have  friends  somewhere.  At  any  rate  he  can't  get  back. 
Has  his  baggage  been  thoroughly  examined?  He  may  have  papers  with 
him. 

One  of  the  officers  left  the  shed  in  which  the  passengers  were 
examined.  The  other  continued  to  go  over  the  two  books — the  tome  in 
question,  and  a  smaller  book  of  "Journal"  size.  An  index  card  also  figured 
in  the  scheme.  I  noticed  that  its  edges  were  slightly  torn  and  badly 
soiled.    It  had  been  fingered  over  for  years,  it  would  seem. 

Presently,  the  man  returned.  The  baggage  of  the  travellers  had 
already  been  put  on  the  shuttle  train  for  Irun,  across  the  Spanish  border. 
But  so  and  so  had  given  the  assurance  that  all  baggage  had  been  properly 
inspected. 

With  a  surly  look  the  passport  was  handed  me,  and  I  was  glad  when 
the  train  was  in  motion.  I  may  mention  though  that  I  had  no  papers  of 
any  sort  among  my  belongings.  They  were  then  already  on  the  wide 
Atlantic  as  part  of  a  diplomatist's  inviolable  baggage. 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

THE  fortunes  of  war  and  the  laws  of  life  have  already  overtaken 
many  of  the  principal  actors  of  the  Great  War.  The  story  is 
that  Czar  Nicholas  and  his  entire  family  have  been  done  to  death 
in  the  foulest  manner — fallen  prey  to  the  monster  which  Sir  George 
Buchanan  and  his  able  fellow  diplomatists  unchained,  when,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  eradicating  the  possibility  of  an  understanding  between  Germany 
and  Russia,  they  promoted  what  may  be  called  the  Kerenski  Revolution. 
The  snow  ball  at  the  top  of  the  mountain  becomes  an  avalanche  when  started 
rolling.  There  was  great  discontent  in  Russia.  To  remove  it  was  one  of 
the  purposes  of  the  War  so  long  as  autocracy  was  in  charge  of  the  situa- 
tion. To  use  that  discontent  was  made  the  plan  of  those  who  looked  upon 
the  Russians  as  still  a  military  and  political  asset.    Bolshevism  resulted. 

Emperor  William  II  is  an  exile,  after  making  none  too  glorious 
an  exit — not  even  from  Germany,  but  from  Belgium.  The  authority  that 
was  to  find  him  guilty  of  something  or  other  seems  to  have  found  that 
he  was  not  guilty  to  the  extent  of  permitting  prosecution.  Probably,  the 
evidence  could  not  be  presented  without  inculpating  others.  With  the 
emperor  went  his  son  and  heir — quite  an  innocuous  young  man  of  but 
the  fraction  of  the  ability  which  it  was  necessary  to  credit  him  with  so 
that  the  slander  heaped  upon  him  might  seem  to  have  a  solid  foundation. 

With  the  two  was  swept  from  its  high  seat  the  German  rule-by-divine- 
right  principle,  and  the  aristocracy  and  bureaucracy  that  were  its  mainstay. 
The  bubble  of  German  governmental  efficiency  held  well  enough,  but  when 
it  was  finally  pricked  by  the  Allies,  with  the  help  of  the  United  States, 
it  was  shown  to  be  no  better  than  other  inflations.  The  mask  of  govern- 
ment snatched  off,  the  German  people  were  shown  to  be  an  aggregate  with 
all  the  faults  and  virtues  of  others — to  those  who  were  not  blinded  by  the 
loathsome  prejudices  that  lead  to  war. 

Francis  Joseph  of  Austria-Hungary,  last  of  the  monarchs  par  excel- 
lence, was  laid  away  in  the  crypt  of  the  Capuzine  Church  in  Vienna,  among 
his  forbears,  before  the  monarchy  crumbled  and  fell.  For  the  greater  part 
of  a  century  had  he  been  emperor  and  king.  For  all  that  his  coffin  looked 
remarkably  small  under  the  black  pall  with  its  huge  white  cross,  before 
the  high  altar  of  St.  Stephen's  Cathedral.     In  all  that  pomp  of  state  and 

364 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  365 

show  of  royal  prerogative  the  catafalque  of  the  dead  sovereign  seemed  to 
me  the  smallest  thing.     It  was  another  case  of  : 

"The  king  is  dead,  long  live  the  king!" 

A  few  weeks  later  I  saw  his  successor  crowned  in  the  Coronation 
Church  of  Ofen.  A  noteworthy  thing  happened.  Count  Tisza  as  paladin 
of  Hungary,  and  the  officiating  cardinal,  had  just  placed  the  crown  of  St. 
Stephen  on  the  head  of  the  young  man — state  and  church  had  together 
endowed  him  with  the  right  to  be  the  future  King  of  Hungary.  But 
the  crown  had  not  been  well  placed.  When  the  king  moved  his  head  a 
little  it  would  have  fallen  off  had  he  not  put  his  hands  up  in  time  and 
caught  it.  Perhaps,  that  was  an  omen.  Monarchy  is  not  dead  in  Europe — 
the  cycle  of  man  has  merely  reached  the  point  where  for  a  time  it  will 
be  not  as  popular  as  it  has  been. 

Count  Tisza  was  assassinated  at  the  instigation  of  a  demagogue — a 
lickspittle  Sylla  of  the  Magyars.  Count  Stuergkh  was  shot  dead  by  one 
of  the  Megali-Idealists  ,who  would  make  mankind  happy  by  doing  without 
the  elimination  of  the  unfit,  who,  nevertheless,  have  their  uses.  The  arch- 
dukes of  Austria  and  the  haughty  nobles  of  Hungary  have  been  snowed 
under  for  the  time  being,  and  the  rapacious  gang  of  bankers  in  Vienna 
and  Budapest  is  no  longer  selling  food  to  the  starving  masses  at  profits 
that  would  have  made  a  Roman  taxes  farmer  envious. 

Of  such  men  as  Count  Czernin  one  hears  seldom  now.  Count  Berchtold, 
dubbed  the  Minister  of  the  handsome  Exterior,  when  he  was  Minister  of 
the  Exterior,  has  no  longer  any  call  for  advice  from  Charles.  With  the 
names  of  Hindenburg,  Ludendorff,  Mackensen,  Falkenhayn,  von  Below, 
have  disappeared  those  of  Hotzendorff,  Boreovic,  von  Arz,  Pflanzer- 
Baltin.  Of  Nicholai-Nicholaievich  and  Broussiloff  and  all  the  others  one 
hears  no  more.  Even  Cadorna  and  Diaz  are  out  of  the  press.  Hence- 
forth it  will  have  to  rain  in  the  Julian  Alps  without  the  world  learning  of 
this  in  an  official  communique. 

King  Ferdinand  finally  met  the  doom  Stambulowski  had  promised 
him.  But  he  lost  only  his  official  head.  When  a  part  of  the  Bulgarian 
army  in  Macedonia  had  been  bought  by  the  Allies,  the  Prince  of  Coburg 
decided  that  his  estate  in  Hungary  would  be  a  better  place  than  Sofia. 
With  him  fell  Dr.  Radoslavoff,  a  man,  who,  when  I  saw  him  last  in 
Vienna,  just  before  the  rupture  of  relations,  had  become  the  very  per- 
sonification of  care  and  worry,  quite  a  shocking  contrast  to  Halil  Bey,  the 
Ottoman  minister  of  foreign  affairs  at  that  time,  who  still  found  occasion 
for  optimism.    Generals  Jekoff  and  Todoroff  are  no  longer  heard  from. 

Sultan  Mohammed  Rechid  Khan  V,  Ghazi,  etc.,  Caliph  of  the  Faith- 
ful, etc.,  was  gathered  to  his  fathers.  Prince  Yussuf  Issedin  committed 
suicide  in  his  hareem  by  opening  the  arteries  in  his  wrist.     Prince  Said 


366  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Halim  Pasha,  grand  vizier,  disappeared  before  the  war  was  lost,  and  his 
place  was  taken  by  Talaat  Pasha,  who  started  in  life  as  a  telegraph 
operator.  Enver  Pasha,  the  young  minister  of  war,  has  not  even  taken 
the  world  into  his  confidence  as  to  his  present  whereabouts,  and  on  the 
Bosphorus  rule  now  men  who  will  have  to  handle  the  future  of  their  race 
with  different  means. 

Sir  Edward  Grey  is  totally  blind,  and  in  his  night  eternal  he  will  have 
time  to  inspect  his  own  share  in  the  great  calamity.  Sazonoff  was  a  sort 
of  hanger-on  at  the  Paris  peace  conversations.  Asquith  sees  his  sun  setting. 
Lord  Kitchener  rests  somewhere  at  the  bottom  of  the  North  Sea.  It  is 
said  that  he  still  lives  in  English  folklore  of  today.  Generals  French,  Haig 
and  Byng  are  out  of  print.  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  is  no  longer  faced  with  the 
situation  of  having  to  reconcile  a  military  operation  with  a  purely  diploma- 
tic purpose,  and  his  able  opponent  Liman  von  Sanders  Pasha  is  no  longer 
obliged  to  endeavor  holding  his  command  while  holding  back  the  Allied 
troops  at  the  same  time.  If  Baron  Wangenheim's  spirit  has  the  faculty  of 
perceiving  things  mundane  it  must  wonder  at  the  mental  spirals  some 
men  employ  in  blackening  the  memory  of  the  dead. 

Very  soon  the  galaxy  of  Great  War  leaders  will  have  faded  into 
oblivion  in  corpus  mundi.  Their  names  will  remain,  of  course,  for  the 
tragedy  of  the  craft  sinister  was  too  great  to  be  forgotten  in  a  hurry. 
Thousands  of  years  from  now  somebody  will  refer  to  the  event  as  we 
do  to  the  Peloponnesian  War  or  the  Persian  invasion  of  Hellas,  and  still 
a  little  later — long  hence  as  we  see  it — in  a  second  as  the  Nilometer  of  the 
flood  of  time  records  it — the  fall  of  Germany  may  be  another  fall  of  Troy — 
with  Priams  and  Agamemnons,  and  possibly  a  Helen — with  a  Helen  in  fact, 
for  all  such  things  reduce  themselves  in  the  course  of  time  to  first  principles, 
those  of  biology. 

Products  of  the  Diplomatic  Laboratory 

Meanwhile,  we  of  today  would  do  well  to  take  a  rational  attitude 
toward  such  things.  Selfishness,  like  every  other  excess  in  nature,  comes 
home  to  roost.  The  good  people  who  saw  the  European  War  in  the  light 
of  exports  and  imports,  industry,  commerce  and  profits — large  profits — 
are  today  face  to  face  with  a  condition  that  may  take  from  their  coffers 
the  very  thing,  which  to  keep,  the  War  was  entered  upon,  driven  to  such 
extremes  and  terminated  in  the  manner  known.  The  last  of  Bolshevism 
has  not  yet  been  heard,  and  the  best  we  may  hope  is  that  Bolshevism 
will  leave  mankind  no  worse  off  than  the  War  already  has  done. 

It  was  greed  of  various  sorts  that  brought  on  the  Great  War,  the 
contentions  of  the  Neo-Idealists  in   statecraft  and  the  Megali-Idealists 


PRODUCTS  OF  THE  DIPLOMATIC  LABORATORY      367 

in  "Pans"  and  self-determination,  notwithstanding.  What  particular  form 
that  greed  took  does  not  matter.  So  far  as  Great  Britain  was  concerned 
it  had  the  character  of  a  national  policy  designed  to  perpetuate  the  empire 
in  face  of  a  rapidly  growing  nation  that  sought  room  for  expansion — 
Germany.  That  the  conflict  in  this  quarter  was  launched  by  a  disagreement 
over  the  Two-Power  Standard,  or  by  the  hatred  of  one  another  of  an 
Emperor  and  a  King,  nephew  and  uncle,  or  by  the  fear  that  German  com- 
merce would  soon  or  late  displace  the  British  foreign  trade,  is  something 
over  which  biased  writers  may  quibble. 

No  doubt  there  will  be  found  those  who  can  defend  Sazonoflf's  methods 
for  the  "realization"  of  Russian  "desires"  on  the  Bosphorus,  despite  the 
fact  that  historically  the  Russian  had  as  much  right  to  Constantinople  as 
the  Yankee.  If  that  city  was  to  be  transferred  on  strictly  ethical  grounds 
— so  much  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  case;  then  it  was  the  Greeks 
who  should  have  gotten  it — not  the  Greeks  of  the  peninsula,  but 
the  Greeks  of  Pera,  the  descendants  of  the  people,  the  Byzantians,  from 
whom  the  city  and  its  territories  was  taken  by  the  Osmanli,  after  the 
good  Crusaders  had  left  it  in  such  poor  shape  to  defend  itself.  If  we  are 
going  to  unscramble  the  omelette  of  events  and  succession,  let  us  at  least 
be  logical  enough  to  do  it  right.  Done  properly  that  process  of  correcting 
injustice  might  have  renewed  in  Constantinople  the  war  of  the  Blues  and 
the  Greens.  No  doubt  partisans  of  the  Angelos,  Palaeologus,  Macedonian, 
and  Armenian  dysnasties  would  have  been  found  in  the  old  families  on 
the  Golden  Horn,  provided  some  Roman,  Athenian,  Spartan  or  Dorian 
pretender  had  not  put  in  appearance. 

In  all  such  matters  the  starting  point  is  the  thing.  To  find  that  point 
is  about  as  easy  as  reaching  a  conclusion  where  a  circle  starts. 

It  was  so  everywhere.  There  are  a  number  of  territories  claimed  by 
many  at  the  same  time. 

There  is  the  Dalmation  coast  and  that  of  Istria.  The  Austro-Hungarians 
held  it.  The  Italians  want  it,  and  the  Jugo-Slavs,  the  inhabitants  of  the 
hinterland,  do  not  want  to  surrender  it.  True  enough  there  are  some 
Italians  on  the  coasts  in  question.  But  how  did  they  get  there?  So  far 
as  modern  history  is  concerned  they  settled  there  when  Venice  was  the 
power  of  the  Adriatic  and  Mediterranean.  But  many  of  the  Venitians 
were  driven  off  when  the  Serbian  emperors  began  to  feel  their  oats.  Other 
Italians  came  to  the  coast  as  immigrants  within  our  own  period.  They 
came  there,  because  the  fishing  on  their  own  shores  was  not  very  profitable, 
while  on  the  island-studded  eastern  expanses  of  the  Adria  it  was.  If  we 
admit  that  principle,  we  will  not  be  far  off  from  having  such  claims  be 
the  cause  of  war  in  other  parts. 

There  is  the  Banat.    Everybody  wanted  the  Banat.    It  was  in  turn 


568  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

promised  by  the  Allied  governments  to  the  Serbs  and  the  Rumanians ;  to 
the  Rumanians  last,  because  it  was  a  bit  of  bait  needed  to  catch  an  ally. 
The  fact  that  this  promise  had  been  used  before,  and  was  likely  to  have 
a  mortgage  on  it,  did  not  seem  to  bother  so  great  a  statesman  as  Bratianu. 
In  the  Banat  live  together  four  races:  Croats,  Germans,  Magyars, 
Rumanians  and  a  few  Serbs,  to  name  them  alphabetically. 

To  what  extent  did  self-determination  worry  the  Allied  governments 
when  they  promised  Rumania  this  choice  morsel  of  Europe?  To  what 
extent,  indeed,  did  any  such  deals  worry  their  minds?  Quite  calmly 
territories  were  signed  away,  just  as  that  had  been  done  in  the  treaties  of 
San  Stefano,  Paris,  Berlin,  Bucharest,  Vienna,  Versailles,  Utrecht,  Ports- 
mouth, and  Osnabrueck,  locale  of  the  closing  scene  of  another  "World 
War." 

And  as  General  Palivanoff  expressed  it  in  his  report  concerning  the 
situation  in  Rumania  in  November,  1916,  the  failure  on  the  battlefield  of 
the  would-be  beneficiary  of  the  treaty  could  always  be  construed  into  a 
gain  for  those  who  had  promised  to  give  what  they  had  not  in  hand. 

Self-determination  must  come  from  within,  as  it  has  come  since  time 
immemorial.  When  its  benefits  are  bestowed  by  the  edict  of  another,  un- 
satisfactory conditions  to  all  concerned  came  of  it. 

On  November  19th,  1918,  M.  Leon  Mirman,  French  commissioner  at 
Metz,  Alsace-Lorraine,  addressed  a  proclamation  to  "the  remaining  Ger- 
mans," which  reads  in  part  as  follows : 

"France  accepts  homage  only  from  those  who  love  her. 

"I  am  sure  that  you  will  love  France  as  soon  as,  morally  re- 
generated by  a  long  and  wholesome  exercise  of  liberty,  you  will 
have  become  capable  of  knowing  it  and  worthy  of  understanding 
her. 

"But,  today,  I  reject  in  her  name  your  hypocritical  acclama- 
tions. I  would  respect  you  more  if  you  were  silent  and  sad, 
wearing  with  dignity  the  mourning  of  your  monstrous  phantasies. 

"I  demand,  I  exact  of  you,  only  one  thing — respect  for  France 
and  her  laws.  Whosoever  attempts  to  disturb  order  will  be 
punished.  Those  among  you  who  conduct  themselves  in  a  proper 
manner  will  not  be  molesl^ed,  and,  should  such  a  thing  occur, 
they  will  receive  protection  from  me  against  any  one  whomsoever, 
in  the  name  of  the  Republic. 

"None  of  you  need  be  troubled  at  having  shown  publicly  in 
the  past  your  joy  in  the  temporary  successes,  and,  more  recently, 
your  sorrow  at  the  final  disaster  of  your  country. 

"But  if  France,  in  the  noble  pride  of  her  victory,  remains 
the  servant  of  justice,  she  does  not  forget — and  justice  makes  it  a 
duty  not  to  forget — the  crimes  of  which  her  children  were  the 
victims. 


PRODUCTS  OF  THE  DIPLOMATIC  LABORATORY      369 

"Those  among  you  who  approved  these  crimes  will  not  be 
prosecuted.  If  you  perceive  today  the  moral  aberration  in  which 
you  allowed  the  guardians  of  your  conscience  to  involve  you, 
France  abandons  you  with  pity  to  your  remorse;  if  you  do  not 
yet  understand,  she  leaves  you  with  disdain  in  your  abject  con- 
dition.    ... 

"I  have  spoken. 

"In  the  name  of  the  Republic,  in  the  name  of  France,  one 
and  indivisible." 

Vae  victis! 

On  January  13,  1919,  or  about  two  months  later  a  protest  was  sent 
to  President  Wilson,  of  which  this  is  a  part : 

"Those  who  up  to  the  present  time  have  been  full  citizens 
of  Alsace-Lorraine — native  residents  of  German  origin  to  whom 
this  land  unquestionably  owes  a  great  deal  of  its  fruitfulness — 
turn  in  deep  distress  to  the  leader  of  the  free  American  people, 
pleading  for  protection  against  the  oppressive  rule  of  the  French 
despotism  under  which  more  than  400,000  people  are  suffer- 
ing."    .      .      . 

The  petition  was  made  by  refugees  from  Alsace-Lorraine  at  Freiburg 
in  Baden.  The  population  of  the  two  provinces  was  in  1910,  1,874,014. 
Alsace  and  Lorraine  were  wrenched  from  the  old  German,  or  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  by  Louis  XIV,  and  Louis  XV.  In 
1871  Alsace  and  Lorraine  were  re-annexed  to  the  German  Empire  as 
a  Reichsland  or  federal  district,  and  for  many  years  thereafter  had  a 
notoriously  shortsighted  government  of  the  Prussian  type,  the  governors 
being  mostly  selected  for  their  expertness  in  discipline  of  the  barracks. 

Let  us  contrast  with  that  the  so-called  Declaration  of  Corfu,  of  July 
20th,  1917. 

"The  authorized  representatives  of  the  Serbs,  Croats  and 
Slovenes,  recognizing  that  the  desire  of  our  people  is  to  free  it- 
self from  any  foreign  yoke  and  to  constitute  itself  an  independent 
national  state,  agree  in  declaring  that  this  state  must  be  founded 
on  the  following  principles : 

"The  State  of  the  Serbs,  Croats  and  Slovenes,  who  are  also 
known  as  Southern  Slavs,  or  Jugoslavs,  will  be  a  free  and  inde- 
pendent kingdom  with  indivisible  territory  and  unity  of  allegiance. 
It  will  be  a  constitutional,  democratic  and  parliamentary  monarchy, 
under  the  Karageorgevitch  dynasty. 

"The  special  Serb,  Croat  and  Slovene  flags  and  coats  of  arms 
may  be  freely  hoisted  and  used. 

"The  three  national  denominations  will  be  equal  before  the 
law,  and  may  be  freely  used  in  public. 

"The  two  alphabets,  Cyrillic  and  Latin,  will  also  rank  equally 
throughout  the  kingdom. 


370  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

"All  recognized  religions  shall  be  exercised  freely  and  pub- 
licly ;  and  in  particular  the  Orthodox,  Roman  Catholic,  and  Mus- 
sulman creeds,  which  are  chiefly  professed  by  our  people,  will  be 
equal  and  have  the  same  rights  in  regard  to  the  state. 

"The  territory  of  the  kingdom  will  include  all  territory  com- 
pactly inhabited  by  our  people,  and  cannot  be  divided  without 
injury  to  the  vital  interests  of  the  community.  Our  nation  de- 
mands nothing  that  belongs  to  others,  but  only  what  is  its  own. 

"In  the  interests  of  freedom  and  of  the  equal  rights  of  all  the 
Adriatic  Sea  shall  be  free  and  open  to  all. 

"All  citizens  shall  be  equal  and  enjoy  the  same  rights  toward 
the  state  and  before  the  law. 

"Deputies  to  the  national  parliament  shall  be  elected  by  uni- 
versal suffrage,  with  equal,  direct  and  secret  ballot."     . 

The  lesson  to  be  gathered  from  these  three  excerpts  is  simple.  The 
last  of  them  has  self-determination  as  its  object,  the  other  two  deal  with  a 
case  of  annexation,  or  re-annexation.  In  the  one  case  irredenta  will  be 
obviated,  in  the  other  it  will  be  made  a  certainty. 

Such  are  the  varying  ideals  of  statecraft,  and  the  contradictory  in- 
terpretations that  may  be  given  the  war  slogan :  "Liberty  for  small  peoples." 
France  did  not  even  think  it  worth  while  to  take  a  plebiscite  in  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  as  at  one  time  some  of  her  leaders  promised.  In  overlooking  that, 
French  statesmen  of  today  can  not  have  considered  seriously  the  future. 
It  is  the  "noble  pride  of  victory"  which  has  bred  more  wars  that  were  un- 
necessary than  anything  else. 

I  have  at  the  beginning  of  the  book  made  some  reference  to  leagues 
of  nations,  citing  two  instances  which  resemble  in  the  main  the  present 
effort.  The  first  of  these  is  known  as  the  League  of  Peace,  of  1518,*  and 
the  second  as  the  Holy  Alliance.  Due  to  the  fact  that  King  Charles  of 
Spain  and  Pope  Leo  X  were  not  keen  supporters  of  the  league,  though 
they  became  signatories  to  it,  the  agreement,  directed  this  time  against  the 
Turks,  did  not  last  very  long.  Two  years  after  its  ratification  it  was 
dead,  and  nothing  came  of  the  fine  promises  made  to  one  another.  The 
Holy  Alliance  has  been  gone  into  already.  It  was  directed  against  the 
French  and  Napoleon,  and  expired  similarly  of  inanition.  For  many  years 
Czar  Nicholas  of  Russia  occupied  himself  with  the  same  ideals,  and  then 
ended  up  by  losing  all  in  the  Great  War. 

Leagues  of  nations  are  as  old  and  common  as  hills  in  Attica.  It  would 
be  denying  that  causes  have  effects,  to  say  that  they  have  done  no  good. 
But  the  good  they  have  done  has  always  been  far  from  their  purpose. 
They  have  not  prevented  wars  for  the  very  simple  reason  that  war  has 
always,  soon  or  late,  broken  out  among  the  members  of  such  leagues. 


See  Appendix. 


PRODUCTS  OF  THE  DIPLOMATIC  LABORATORY      371 

The  peoples  of  the  signatories  of  the  Treaty  of  1518,  began  exactly  one 
hundred  years  later  to  devastate  all  of  Central  Europe  in  one  of  the 
bloodiest  of  wars  of  our  era,  the  Thirty  Years'  War.  Prussia  and  Austria, 
signatories  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  went  to  war  fifty  years  later,  and  the 
same  two  countries  in  1914  made  common  cause  against  the  third  of  the 
signatories,  Russia,  and  the  object  of  the  alliance,  France,  though  by  that 
time  the  Holy  Alliance  had  long  been  forgotten  and  was  no  longer  the 
chemical  trace  of  a  political  fact. 

Modern  enthusiasts  and  Neo-Idealists  claim  that  with  this  League  of 
Nations  it  will  be  different.  One  would  say:  Let  us  hope  so,  if  to  say 
that  would  not  involve  the  complete  negation  of  all  history. 

As  to  Open  Covenants  and  Open  Diplomacy 

The  reader  may  well  have  passed  under  the  impression  that  the  old 
system  of  diplomatic  relations  is  dangerous  and  that  to  continue  it  would 
be  to  invite  more  disasters.  All  of  that  is  very  true.  It  may  seem  also 
that  improvement  does  not  lie  in  the  direction  of  continuation  of  the 
present  methods  of  international  intercourse.  That  also  is  true,  only  too 
true,  as  Mr.  Wilson  must  have  realized  when  he  set  up  the  First  of  his 
Fourteen  Points: 

"Open  covenants  of  peace,  openly  arrived  at,  after  which 
there  shall  be  no  private  international  understandings  of  any 
kind,  but  diplomacy  shall  proceed  always  frankly  in  the  public 
view." 

The  main  purpose  of  this  labor  of  mine  was  to  show  how  difficult, 
nay  impossible,  it  is  to  have  our  present  system  of  "diplomacy  . 
proceed  always  frankly  in  the  public  view."  So  long  as  there  is  a 
diplomacy  that  resembles  in  any  respect  the  practice  as  we  have  had  it, 
"private  international  understandings"  will  be  made,  even  if,  as  some  have 
suggested,  there  be  no  longer  such  a  thing  as  "diplomatic  privileges,"  that 
is:  The  granted  and  reciprocally  accepted  "right,"  as  governments  and 
their  own  agents  view  it,  of  sending  secret  communications  to  one  another. 
The  elimination  of  such  things  as  telegrams  in  code,  and  inviolable  mail 
pouches,  would  mean  nothing  at  all,  would,  on  the  other  hand,  tend  merely 
to  once  more  lead  the  world  public  into  a  false  sense  of  security. 

The  remedy,  then,  does  not  lie  in  that  direction. 

It  has  been  maintained  that  diplomatic  services  are  necessary  in  the 
expedition  of  inter-governmental  affairs  of  a  routine  character.  Such  is 
hardly  the  case.  In  times  of  peace  and  in  the  absence  of  intrigue  the 
ambassador  and  minister  of  the  government  that  has  no  designs  upon  its 
neighbor  is  little  more  than  a  drone — a  sort  of  superior  messenger  boy,  as 


372  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

has  been  said.  The  comunications  he  has  to  transmit  to  the  Foreign  Office 
of  his  post  could  be  transmitted  in  the  regular  international  mail  and  over 
the  wires  and  cables  in  plain  text  or  a  cypher  that  is  not  secret  in  the  sense 
in  which  government  codes  are  this.  If  that  were  not  desirable  in  some 
cases,  the  consul  could  attend  to  the  matter,  if  such  a  consul,  or  consul- 
general,  were  given  no  other  function  than  that  which  is  his  at  present  when 
no  diplomatic  standing  is  given  him.  Nothing  would  be  gained,  of  course, 
if  consular  officers  were  allowed  to  dabble  in  diplomacy. 

This  would  mean,  of  course,  that  there  would  be  no  diplomatists,  and 
that  inter-governmental  affairs  would  be  limited  to  matters  concerning 
entirely  the  maintenance  of  existing  relations.  Alliances  and  understandings 
of  any  sort  could  not  be  taken  care  of  in  that  manner,  and  not  to  have 
alliances  and  such  was  recognized  as  best  by  the  immortal  George  Washing- 
ton in  his  farewell  address  when  he  warned  the  people  of  the  United  States 
against  the  making  of  "entangling  alliances"  and  gave  as  his  reason : 
"Excessive  partiality  for  one  foreign  nation  and  excessive 
dislike  of  another  cause  those  by  whom  they  are  actuated  to 
look  for  danger  only  from  one  side,  and  thus  serve  to  veil  and 
even  to  second  the  arts  of  influence  of  the  other.   Real  patriots 
who  may  resist  the  intrigues  of  the  favorite  are  liable  to  be- 
come suspected  and  even  odious,  while  its  dupes  and  tools 
usurp  the  applause  and  the  confidence  of  the  people  to  sur- 
render their  interests." 

The  best  sort  of  international  relations  are  those  devoid  of  all  alliances 
and  understandings,  save  the  one  understanding  which  alone  can  preserve 
peace — a  mutual  desire  to  live  in  harmony  with  the  national  neighbor.  If 
each  people  and  government  will  do  that  alliances  will  not  be  necessary. 

But  there  will  always  be  the  bully,  and  the  ambitious  governments,  who 
will  not  want  to  join  sincerely  such  a  scheme.  Unfortunately,  this  half- 
finished  world  of  ours  is  not  yet  ready  to  be  run  on  ideals,  even  if  in  the 
course  of  time  we  have  come  a  little  nearer  to  that.  Nor  will  it  be  possible 
for  ages  to  come  to  control  those  desires  in  nations  which  become  articulate 
in  chauvinism  and  jingoism,  interpreting  one  as  the  element  that  promotes 
in  times  of  deepest  peace  the  cause  of  war  by  fostering  prejudices,  and  the 
other  as  the  agency  which  promotes  hatred  when  war  is  imminent  or  is 
come. 

These  are  things  to  which  to  be  blind  would  defeat  every  effort  to 
spare  mankind  the  visitations  it  has  recently  groaned  under.  It  is  best 
to  look  at  the  individual  and  the  groups  he  forms  as  biological  phenomena, 
the  defects  of  which  can  not  be  explained  away,  though  amenable  to 
abatement  they  be.  Quite  the  most  dangerous  foe  of  mankind  is  he  who 
looks  upon  mankind  as  being  better  than  it  is.  In  the  life  of  men 
as  in  that  of  nations,  the  primitive  passion  is  "to  have  and  to  hold." 


AS  TO  OPEN  COVENANTS  AND  OPEN  DIPLOMACY    373 

To  restrict  that  passion  so  that  it  will  not  come  in  hostile  conflict 
with  another  instance  of  it  has  been  the  purpose  of  the  legislator  and 
moralist  ever  since  organized  society  has  existed,  and  that  goes  far  beyond 
known  history.  But  in  this  the  law-givers  have  had  the  advantage  of 
being  also  the  punishers.  A  law  that  is  not  enforced,  or  can  not  be  en- 
forced, is  not  a  law  at  all,  of  course.  It  is  mere  verbiage.  Law  in  order  to 
be  enforceable  must  have  authority  behind  it.  Law,  to  be  just,  must 
have  the  consent  of  those  that  are  subject  to  it,  for  otherwise  it  becomes 
nothing,  and,  indeed,  never  is  more  in  such  instances,  but  the  edict  of 
some  absolutism,  be  this  autocracy  or  democracy  applied  in  extremes. 

It  has  been  shown  here  that  International  Law  has  none  of  the 
characteristics,  though  some  of  the  qualities,  of  Municipal  Law,  the  form 
of  legislation  I  have  just  mentioned.  International  Law  lacks  a  sanction- 
ing authority — the  means  to  punish  those  who  break  it. 

Though  International  Law  was  ruled  by  the  British  Government  to 
be  a  dead  letter  in  all  respects  not  promotive  of  British  public  interest, 
during  the  Great  War,  we  will  be  obliged  to  make  use  of  it  again  in  the 
future.  International  regulation  there  must  be,  and  no  matter  what  style 
this  may  be  given  for  the  immediate  future,  the  fact  is  that  International 
Law,  as  it  was,  will  again  become  the  fact  in  international  relations,  for 
the  very  good  reason  that  International  Law  is  not  in  principle  an  artificial 
structure,  but  entirely  a  code  of  conduct,  based  upon  the  exigencies  of  inter- 
communion and  the  lessons  they  have  taught.  It  is  entirely  of  an  advisory 
nature.  International  Law  does  not  set  penalties,  but  merely  points  to 
correct  conduct.  No  matter  what  efforts  may  be  made  to  improve  upon 
that  condition,  nothing  better  than  what  we  have  now  will  ever  be  evolved, 
because  conditions  will  not  be  other  than  what  they  are,  so  long  as  states 
will  continue  to  apply  the  principle  of  sovereignty  and  look  upon  each 
other  as  equals  within  their  own  boundaries  and  rights. 

To  set  up  International  Courts  of  Justice  is  not  feasible,  because  such 
sovereign  states  as  would  be  brought  before  them  can  not  accept  others  as 
their  peers  without  violating  their  sovereignty  themselves.  The  entire 
category  of  cases  involving  national  honor,  of  which  so  much  was  heard 
in  the  peace  movement  which  immediately  preceded  the  Great  War,  belongs 
to  the  subject  of  sovereignty.  To  enforce  the  degrees  of  such  courts — in 
other  words,  to  give  International  Law  the  power  to  punish — is  out  of  the 
question,  therefore.  A  state  or  government  that  may  be  punished  has 
ceased  to  be  sovereign,  if  it  submits;  it  ceases  to  be  independent,  if  it  is 
forced  to  submit,  and  it  is  no  longer  a  member  of  a  league  when,  in  defense 
of  what  it  conceives  to  be  its  honor,  it  revolts  against  the  decree  pro- 
nounced and  goes  to  war. 

This,  then,  is  the  insuperable  difficulty — has  been  the  difficulty  ever 


374  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

since  within  the  realm  of  history  nations  have  tried  to  preserve  the  peace 
by  similar  measures  and  methods. 

The  application  of  penalties  being  out  of  the  question,  we  must  needs 
look  for  a  remedy  in  another  direction,  and  must  find  it  in  suasion. 

A  Better  Base  for  International  Relations 

There  are  not  many  who  will  remember  that  there  was  such  a  thing 
as  an  Interparliamentary  Union.  The  body  was  in  session  a  little  before 
the  European  War  broke  out.  It  has  not  been  heard  of  since,  because  the 
rational  in  all  things  has  had  a  hard  time  of  it  recently.  Yet  to  the 
Interparliamentary  Union  we  will  have  to  look  for  the  preservation  of 
peace;  to  it  we  will  have  to  turn  when  the  moment  comes  in  which  the 
paper  houses  of  the  Neo-Idealists  and  Megalo-Idealists  will  fall  together. 

Expanding  the  principles  of  the  Interparliamentary  Union  as  it  was 
into  a  system  such  as  it  should  be,  we  would  find  that  its  general  character 
ought  to  be  more  or  less  this : 

( 1 )  Complete  independence  of  the  executive  branch  of  the  government 
for  each  national  delegation. 

(2)  Full  mandatory  powers  for  each  delegation  from  the  national 
parliamentary  body  of  which  it  is  and  remains  a  part;  the  several  man- 
datory powers  to  be  uniform  in  all  respects,  and  so  conferred  upon  each 
national  delegation  that  the  several  mandates  would  confer  full  mandatory 
powers  upon  the  Interparliamentary  Union. 

(3)  All  governments  to  guarantee,  by  special  acts  of  the  several  parlia- 
ments, if  necessary,  that  at  all  times,  war  included,  the  delegates  of  the 
union  would  enjoy  inviolability  and  complete  immunity,  whether  they 
belonged  to  a  belligerent  state  or  a  neutral  one ;  full  inviolability  to  be  given 
also  to  the  dispatches  and  mail  of  the  delegates  at  all  times,  war  included,  as 
well  as  free  transit  to  and  from  the  seat  of  the  Interparliamentary  Union, 
regardless  of  war  measures  aflFecting  other  travel. 

(4)  Immunity  from  war  legislation  of  any  kind  passed  by  the  parlia- 
ment to  which  the  delegation  belongs. 

(5)  Parliaments  to  be  represented,  on  a  census  per  capita  basjs,  by 
not  less  than  three  nor  more  than  nine  delegates,  with  no  delegations  from 
colonial  parliaments  accepted  in  cases  where  the  same  national  element  or 
race  is  already  represented  in  the  Union  by  the  parliament  exercising 
suzerainty  in  any  degree  over  the  colony  in  question,  through  the  executive 
branch  of  the  government. 

(6)  The  Interparliamentary  Union  to  be  a  body  of  one  chamber. 

(7)  No  members  of  the  national  parliament  to  be  eligible  for  service 
on  the  interparliamentary  delegation  if  within  ten  years  connected  with  the 


A  BETTER  BASE  FOR  INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    375 

executive  branch  of  their  government  in  any  capacity,  or  known  to  be 
personally  or  through  affiliation  connected  with  great  financial  interests 
anywhere,  the  body  of  the  Interparliamentary  Union  reserving  the  right 
to  pass  upon  these  requirements. 

(8)  The  Interparliamentary  Union  to  meet  once  every  year  in  times 
of  peace  and  to  go  into  session  immediately  following  a  declaration  of 
war,  and  to  continue  therein  until  the  conclusion  of  the  war. 

(9)  All  participating  national  parliaments  to  agree  not  to  ratify  peace 
treaties  before  these  have  been  reviewed  by  the  Interparliamentary  Union ; 
no  agreement  between  belligerents  involving  in  any  way  the  territory  of  a 
neutral,  or  his  rights  whatsoever,  to  be  considered  legal  until  it  has  the 
approval  of  the  Parliamentary  Union. 

(10)  Subject  races  and  racial  aggregates  under  suzerainty  of  another 
to  have  the  right  to  submit  to  the  Interparliamentary  Union  their  grievances, 
without  any  obligation  upon  the  Union  to  act  in  the  premises  if  it  should 
not  deem  that  necessary. 

(11)  Duties  of  the  Parliamentary  Union: 

(a);  To  reduce  International  Law  to  easily  recognizable  and 
definitely  delimited  propositions  and  terms,  so  that  none  of  them 
could  be  evaded  or  in  spirit  violated  by  an  interpretory  decree  of 
a  belligerent  government  or  governments,  leaving  it  free,  how- 
ever, for  belligerent  governments  to  engage  in  reprisal,  within  the 
limits  of  International  Law  as  then  constituted,  provided  that  no 
neutral  interest  of  any  kind  is  thereby  endangered  or  actually 
injured.  No  distinction  to  be  made  as  to  the  means  of  warfare 
on  land  and  sea,  provided  they  do  not  affect  the  welfare  of  non- 
combatants  who  do  not  venture  into  a  zone  of  war  on  land  or  sea 
which  has  been  established  by  the  belligerent  powers  in  accord 
with  International  Law. 

(b)  To  work  for  the  elimination  of  situations  that  might 
lead  to  war,  by  approaching  upon  this  subject  the  national  parlia- 
ments concerned,  without  putting  forth  coercion  in  any  form. 

(c)  To  discourage  armament  by  approaching  the  national 
parliaments. 

(d)  To  promote  economic  equity  through  the  same  channel. 

(e)  To  assist  through  the  same  channel  in  the  facilitation 
of  international  intercourse,  and  to  see  that  no  discrimination  in 
trade  is  practiced  by  the  stronger  state  upon  the  weaker. 

(f)  To  discourage  the  conducting  of  propaganda  in  favor 
of  war,  through  the  national  parliament  of  the  delegation  in  whose 
countries  that  propaganda  may  be  conducted.  To  encourage  by 
legislation  the  maintenance  abroad  of  proper  and  responsible  news- 
paper representation,  which  in  times  of  war  should  be  so  extended 
by  the  national  parliament  that  the  belligerent,  establishing  a 
censorship  or  interfering  otherwise,  in  any  manner,  with  the  flow 


376  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

of  news  communication,  over  telegraph,  telephone,  radio,  cable  or 
mail  system,  be  refused  access  to  the  press  of  the  country,  no 
matter  what  his  arguments  for  the  departure  from  normal  condi- 
tions might  be.  No  belligerent  to  be  obliged,  however,  to  admit 
war  correspondents  or  other  civilians  to  his  fronts ;  refusal  to  ad- 
mit authorized  persons  to  be  followed  by  the  proscription  of  pub- 
lishing the  official  military  communiques  of  the  government  con- 
cerned. 

(12)  The  Interparliamentary  Union  not  to  occupy  itself  with  strictly 
internal  affairs  of  any  of  the  countries  represented  or  not  represented,  be 
these  social,  economic,  political  or  questions  of  conscience;  no  distinctions 
to  be  drawn  between  forms  of  governments,  race  or  color,  or  the  interests 
of  maritime  nations  against  those  of  continental  nations. 

(13)  Delegations  or  delegates  to  the  Interparliamentary  Union  to 
enjoy  full  immunity,  but  to  be  subject  to  the  Municipal  Laws  of  the  country 
in  which  the  Union  may  have  its  seat,  within  those  guarantees  already 
stated. 

(14)  Violations  of  International  Law  shall,  after  having  been  brought 
to  the  attention  of  the  oflfending  government  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
full  adherence  to  the  rules  broken,  be  brought  to  the  attention  of  each 
parliament  represented  in  the  Union,  with  such  recommendations  as  the 
Interparliamentary  Union  may  deem  fit  to  make. 

(15)  The  Interparliamentary  Union  shall  in  like  manner  proceed  in 
case  a  belligerent  changes  in  any  respect  the  list  of  Contraband  and 
Non-Contraband  the  Union  has  set  up,  or  departs  from  the  rule  that  "free 
ships  make  free  goods."  Non-Contraband  shall  in  no  case  be  added  to 
Contraband,  and  Conditional  contraband  shall  be  abolished.  The  furnish- 
ing of  war  material  by  neutrals  to  belligerents  shall  be  limited  to  the  normal 
output  of  existing  plants,  and  for  the  supervision  of  that  traffic  a  neutral 
commission  shall  be  named.  The  export  of  Non-'Contraband  to  belligerents 
shall  also  be  limited  to  the  normal  volume,  and  shall  be  supervised  in  like 
manner,  and  war  loans  made  by  a  neutral  shall  in  no  case  exceed  one-half 
of  the  purchase  price  of  the  merchandise  named. 

(16)  The  care  of  the  citizens  and  property  of  one  belligerent  in  the 
country  of  another  belligerent  shall  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  neutral 
commission  to  be  named  by  the  Interparliamentary  Union,  as  shall  be  the 
wounded  and  prisoners  of  war,  and  civilian  interned,  taken  by  a  belligerent 
government.  The  Interparliamentary  Union  is  to  supervise  the  trials  of  the 
nationals  of  a  belligerent  state  in  the  courts,  military  and  civil,  of  the 
enemy. 

(17)  Sanction  of  practices  contrary  to  International  Law  by  national 
parliaments,  by  refusing  to  co-operate  with  the  Interparliamentary  Union, 
in  the  endeavor  to  effect  correction,  shall  by  majority  vote  lead  to  the 


A  BETTER  BASE  FOR  INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    Vll 

dismissal  from  the  Interparliamentary  Union  of  the  national  delegation 
concerned,  the  national  delegation  of  the  other  belligerent,  or  belligerents, 
shall  not  participate  either  in  debate  upon  the  subject  or  in  voting. 

(18)  The  Interparliamentary  Union  shall  have  no  other  punitive 
power  than  that  which  it  can  exert  morally,  or  that  upon  which  the  national 
parliaments  may  decide  in  its  support.  Before  military  measures  are  em- 
ployed against  a  state  or  government  for  infraction  or  disregard  of  the 
rules  of  International  Law,  notice  of  short  duration  is  to  be  given.  The 
rights  under  International  Law  of  a  state  against  whom  the  Interparlia- 
mentary Union  shall  have  invoked  military  action  shall  thereby  not  be 
invalidated,  nor  shall  the  belligerent  in  whose  favor  such  military  action 
may  operate  enjoy  any  other  but  only  the  military  advantages  accruing 
from  the  step.  No  war  indemnities  of  any  sort  may  be  collected  in  such 
a  case  without  the  consent  of  the  Interparliamentary  Union. 

While  the  outline  here  given  speaks  for  itself,  it  will  be  necessary 
to  explain  why  the  executive  branches  of  governments  are  not  in  any 
manner  represented  in  the  scheme.  The  purpose  of  this  is  to  remove  from 
the  Interparliamentary  Union  all  show  of  force  and  coercion  and  to  place 
all  action  which  may  become  necessary  in  the  safeguarding  of  the  law 
of  nations  in  the  hands  of  the  parliaments,  and  with  that  so  much  closer 
to  the  people  who  will  have  to  stand  the  cost  of  such  action. 

The  plan  also  has  the  advantage  of  limiting  the  powers  of  war  of 
the  chief  executive,  since  in  the  majority  of  cases  then,  if  not  in  all,  it 
would  be  the  parliament  which  would  decide  whether  a  casus  belli  had 
arisen  or  not,  something  which  the  present  methods  do  not  permit  in  any 
case.  Another  feature  would  be  that  the  executive  branch  of  the  govern- 
ment would  be  the  servant  of  the  parliament  in  time  of  war,  instead  of 
being,  as  now,  its  master.  In  times  of  peace  the  executive  branch  of  a 
government  remains  subject  to  any  national  assembly  worthy  of  the  name; 
to  bring  about  a  condition  in  which  the  same  institution  would  remain 
amenable  to  the  parliament  also  in  war  seems  highly  desirable  in  the  light 
of  the  long  siege  of  parrot-parliamentism  the  world  has  just  had.  Parlia- 
ments having  to  face  the  possibility  of  being  denied  representations  in  the 
Interparliamentary  Union,  seeing,  moreover,  the  possibility  of  concerted 
military  action  against  their  country,  would  be  loath  to  sanction  in  their 
government  the  violation  of  International  Law,  to  guard  which  is,  indeed, 
the  only  object  of  this  scheme,  though  in  itself  it  would  be  a  deterrent 
to  the  promoters  of  war. 

The  operation  of  the  plan  outlined  would  be  such  that  the  sovereignty 
of  the  several  states  would  be  respected  until  that  moment  when  it  should 
have  been  proven  that  the  state  concerned  did  not  respect  it  itself,  by 


37S  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

breaking  the  first  rule  of  the  law  of  nations,  that  which  declares  all  states 
wholly  independent  are  sovereign.  The  scope  and  modus  operandi  of  this 
plan  is  siich  that  states  backward  internally  would  in  affairs  of  an  interna- 
tional character  be  elevated  to  the  plane  of  the  more  progressive  nations. 

The  provisions  I  have  mentioned  in  regard  to  the  press  are  very 
necessary.  To  exclude  from  the  press  all  news  from  a  country  at  war,  as 
soon  as  a  censorship  has  been  established,  or  other  methods  of  force  em- 
ployed to  promote  the  interest  of  one  belligerent  against  that  of  another, 
becomes  not  an  unfriendly  act,  as  in  the  past  it  would  have  been  looked 
upon,  but  merely  an  act  of  self-preservation  so  necessary  that  one  must 
wonder  why  parliaments  have  in  the  past  ignored  it.  News  restrictions 
as  practised  in  times  of  war  are  the  sine  qua  non  of  propaganda.  To  let 
out  only  news  that  is  favorable  to  oneself,  and  therefore  unfavorable  to 
the  other  belligerent,  may  in  itself  be  justified,  but  is  subversive  of  neutral 
interests. 

The  neutral  has  as  much  a  right  to  self-preservation  as  the  belligerent, 
and  the  line  of  demarkation  becomes  even  clearer  when  two  states  have 
gone  to  war.  In  fact,  belligerent  states  should  in  all  cases  be  put  in 
absolute  quarantine  and  abandoned  to  themselves,  so  long  as  International 
Law  is  not  broken  by  them.  To  have  war  as  terrible  as  possible,  with  the 
noncombatants  and  neutrals  well  protected,  must  be  looked  upon  as  the  ideal. 
To  the  neutral  it  can  make  no  difference  how  men  kill  one  another,  so 
long  as  they  confine  their  efforts  to  combatants.  It  being  useless  to  appeal 
to  the  sanity  of  governments  at  war,  their  insanity  ought  to  be  given  the 
widest  field. 

The  proposition  should  be  fostered  that  in  times  of  war  the  rights  of 
the  neutral  are  always  greater  than  the  rights  of  belligerents,  as  in  logic 
they  are.  If  one'  state  selects  to  pass  under  the  handicaps  imposed  by 
declaring  war,  that  is  an  act  of  volition  of  which  it  must  bear  the  con- 
sequences. If  another  state  be  unjustly  placed  under  the  same  disadvantages, 
that  is  one  of  the  incidents  of  national  biology  which  we  may  regret  but 
can  not  obviate.  Moreover,  the  cases  are  rare  in  which  two  states  went 
to  war  with  one  entirely  innocent  of  wrongdoing.  The  chances  of  war  will 
be  greatly  diminished  when  once  it  is  understood  that  the  rights  of  the 
neutral  are  and  remain  greater  than  those  of  the  belligerent. 

There  is  no  moral  reason  that  could  prevent  a  state  from  placing  under 
the  ban  all  news  coming  from  a  country  having  in  operation  a  censorship 
or  interfering  with  the  news  channels  in  any  manner  whatsoever.  Ipso  facto 
such  interference  is  an  attempt  to  further  the  interests  of  the  belligerent 
concerned  in  the  country  of  a  neutral.  There  being  no  reason  why  a 
neutral  should  permit  this,  the  suppression  of  such  news  is  not  an  un- 
friendly act,  but  one  of  self-preservation.    Belligerent  governments  have 


A  BETTER  BASH  FOR  INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    3?9 

no  right  to  make  propaganda  among  neutral  peoples,  and  it  can  make 
no  difference  whether  that  propaganda  is  direct  or  indirect.  The  publication 
of  official  military  communiques  should  be  forbidden,  when  it  is  shown 
that  the  belligerent  is  averse  to  having  war  correspondents  at  his  fronts. 
This  for  the  reason  that  military  communiques  present  only  one  side  of  the 
case,  are  not  in  the  least  frank  or  informative,  extremely  partial,  therefore, 
and,  having  no  news  value,  must  be  put  in  the  domain  of  propaganda. 
Since  the  presence  of  neutral  war  correspondents  could  have  a  salutary 
effect  upon  the  forces  of  the  belligerents,  this  measure  ought  to  be 
enforced  from  that  angle  also,  provided  care  was  taken  to  send  only  men 
of  character  and  ability  on  such  missions,  and  not  as  was  the  case  so 
often  during  the  Great  War,  baseball  reporters  and  police  court  scribes. 

The  Field  of  the  Interparliamentary  Union 

The  general  purpose  of  the  Interparliamentary  Union  would  be  to 
discourage  not  only  the  making  of  war,  but  to  curb  the  preliminary  efforts 
and  cure  anterior  conditions.  For  that  the  executive  branch  of 
any  government  is  wholly  unsuited.  The  legislator  has  usually  in  mind 
the  blessings  of  peace,  while  the  government  official,  no  matter  how 
conscientious,  is  bound  to  occupy  himself  a  great  deal  with  the  alternative 
of  peace — war.  The  government  official  at  present  approaches  all  inter- 
national problems  from  the  standpoint  that  in  the  end  military  means  will 
have  to  be  used  to  settle  the  issue,  while  the  parliamentarian,  knowing  that 
he  cannot  present  a  fait  accompli  to  the  national  assembly,  would  do  his 
best  to  bring  about  a  settlement  on  the  basis  of  mutual  understanding.  In 
other  words  the  Interparliamentary  Union,  and  such  was  its  original 
intent,  would  act  upon  the  executive  branches  of  governments  as  a  check. 

The  questions  that  come  up  between  states  are  far  better  disposed  of 
in  free  and  open  discussion  by  parliamentary  delegates  than  in  the  secrecy 
of  Foreign  Offices  and  diplomatic  posts.  The  use  of  force  begets  force, 
and  among  equals  a  threat  is  generally  met  by  a  suitable  countermeasure, 
for  otherwise  they  would  not  remain  equals.  The  equality  of  states  being 
a  fiction — a  very  necessary  hypothesis — which  for  millenniums  man  has 
employed,  because  nothing  better  could  be  found,  it  will  always  be  necessary 
to  meet  it  in  kind.  As  abstracts  of  any  sort  will  do,  this  one  gives  ex- 
cellent results  so  long  as  it  is  not  subjected  to  the  test  of  actuality,  as  is 
the  case  when  friendly  relations  exist  between  states  and  when  this  fiction 
is  respected  by  the  stronger,  or  at  least  not  openly  questioned. 

When  war  comes,  the  sovereignty  of  one  belligerent  is  denied  by  the 
conduct  of  the  other,  while  the  neutral  must  continue  to  recognize  the 
sovereignty  of  both.    But  a  point  may  be  reached  in  which  the  neutral  can 


380  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

no  longer  do  this,  and  since  in  such  cases  the  error  of  the  offending  state 
may  be  based  on  the  natural  desire  to  defend  itself  with  any  means,  even 
at  the  expense  of  a  neutral,  a  precipitate  attack  upon  the  offender  would 
hardly  serve  the  purposes  of  justice  and  future  peace. 

So  far  as  possible  this  contingency  could  be  cared  for  in  International 
Law,  and  the  Interparliamentary  Union,  as  guardian  of  International  Law, 
would  be  in  a  position  to  review  such  situations,  correct  the  condition,  and 
if  necessary  apply  the  preventive  measures  outlined.  There  is  only  one 
force  that  can  rein  governments  at  war,  and  that  is  world  public  opinion. 
Only  an  Interparliamentary  Union  with  the  mandate  and  duties  outlined 
here  can  make  world  public  opinion  articulate,  and  the  press  measures  to 
which  I  referred  would  serve  to  make  world  public  opinion  much  more 
unbiased  than  it  has  been  in  the  past,  especially  during  the  Great  War. 

The  opinion  of  the  world  public  is  useless  so  long  as  it  is  not  based 
on  knowledge  of  the  actual  facts,  and  is  not  contaminated  by  propaganda 
of  the  belligerents,  or  corrupted  by  the  direct  and  indirect  control  of  the 
press  by  its  government.  It  becomes  then  a  thing  which  is  an  emotion 
rather  than  an  opinion,  and  in  emotion  the  end  justifies  the  means  always 
without  exceptions. 

As  the  great  Disraeli  once  put  it,  there  are  lies  and  lies  and  statistics; 
in  times  of  war  governments  peddle,  as  I  have  shown  in  sufficiency,  I 
think,  lies  and  lies  and  facts.  The  entire  gamut  of  atrocities  is  a  tissue  of 
falsehood  with  a  few  facts  to  substantiate  the  sorry  mess  of  the  prop- 
aganda writers.  I  have  yet  to  meet  the  propagandist  who  would  not 
admit  privately  that  the  excesses  on  any  front  were  due  to  the  fact  that  in 
such  large  levies  of  men  as  were  made  during  the  Great  War,  the  criminal 
and  potential  criminal  would  get  into  the  army  together  with  the  men 
for  whom  governments  do  not  have  to  maintain  in  peace:  Police  forces, 
jails,  courts,  penitentiaries,  gallows,  reformatories  and  asylums  for  the 
insane. 

Governments,  being  the  very  incarnation  of  inconsistency,  at  any 
time,  will  plead  that  point  when  charges  are  made  against  their  forces, 
but  will  totally  overlook  it  when  making  such  charges  against  the  adversary. 
The  "Captain  Fryatt"  and  "Edith  Cavell"  cases  on  the  debit  side  of  the 
Allies'  ledger  did  not  come  to  the  notice  of  the  public  of  the  United  States 
because  Great  Britain  and  France  controlled  the  cables.  Such  cases  as  the 
"Baralong"  affair  and  the  execution  of  alleged  spies  by  the  British  and 
French  military  authorities,  balance,  if  not  outbalance,  the  murder  of 
Captain  Fryatt  and  Miss  Cavell.  In  the  department  of  humanities,  the 
Interparliamentary  Union  could  become  a  veritable  savior  of  mankind,  and 
in  becoming  that  it  would  delete  whole  chapters  of  propaganda — make 
propaganda  in  times  of  war  impossible  in  fact,  by  taking  from  it  the 


FIELD  OF  THE  INTERPARLIAMENTARY  UNION      381 

means  that  serve  to  inflame  a  neutral  public  whose  interest  lies  never 
in  participating  in  a  war  but  in  keeping  out  of  it,  no  matter  what  arguments 
the  Neo-Idealist  and  Megalo-Idealist  may  put  up. 
The  man  who  goes  to  war  is  always  wrong. 

Why  Diplomacy  Should  Get  Its  Passport 

I  cannot  well  close  this  book  without  saying  something  more  of  diplo- 
macy and  those  who  practice  it.  "Open  covenant,  openly  arrived  at"  is, 
indeed,  a  happy  prospect.  But  how  will  such  covenants  remain  open,  so 
long  as  there  is  nobody  that  will  take  them  into  keeping  and  see  to  it 
that  the  selfsame  covenant  remains  confined  to  its  original  objectives. 
When  governments  are,  permitted  to  define  their  treaties  and  such,  all 
things  are  possible,  so  long  as  words  have  synonyms,  and  ideas  are  ca- 
pable of  being  sub-divided.  So  long  as  there  is  diplomacy  of  the  brand  I 
have  described  with  all  fairness  and  with  all  accuracy,  so  long  will  "open 
covenants,  openly  arrived  at"  be  subject  to  modification  by  diplomacy. 
The  art  of  negotiation  is  the  exercise  of  minds  striving  for  something  of 
an  advantageous  nature. 

Trickery  and  deception  are  incident  to  all  bargaining,  taking  the  least 
\  objectionable  form  in  the  feigned  indifference  of  the  would-be  buyer  and 
the  simulated  unconcern  of  the  would-be  seller.  It  is  so  in  diplomacy, 
with  the  result  that  many  of  the  bargains  made,  treaties  and  conventions, 
are  later  regretted  by  one  of  the  contracting  parties.  There  either  was 
no  meeting  of  the  minds,  or  none  was  sought,  or,  again,  in  the  course 
of  a  few  years  the  complexion  of  things  may  have  changed  so  that  to  live 
up  to  the  bargain  comes  to  be  thought  an  injustice.  Life  is  a  thing  in  flux 
with  the  individual  and  groups,  and  for  that  reason  no  treaty  looks  the 
morning  after  as  good  as  it  did  on  the  day  on  which  it  was  made. 

The  present  modus  of  international  diplomatic  relations  is  unsuited 
enough  when  considered  merely  from  that  angle — the  angle  of  honesty  let 
us  call  it.  When  to  these  natural  limitations  there  is  added  ulterior  mo- 
tive and  designs  arising  from  the  dictates  of  the  hour,  when  thereto  is 
joined  the  factor  of  human  error,  and  the  noxious  elements  of  personal 
ambition  by  the  diplomatic  arriviste,  the  incomptency  of  "occasional''  dip- 
lomatists, the  idiosyncrasies  of  ambassadors  and  ministers  plenipoteniary 
whose  nerves  have  been  wrecked,  the  foibles  of  the  Neo-Idealist,  and  the 
grandiose  plans  of  Megalo-Idealists,  then  mankind,  indeed,  is  in  a  bad 
way.  The  establishment  of  such  an  institution  as  I  have  referred  to 
I  above,  an  Interparliamentary  Union,  composed  of  men  bent  upon  peace 
by  the  very  nature  of  their  duties,  becomes  the  paramount  obligation  of 


382  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

all  those  who  sec  the  future  of  man  in  terms  of  evolution  rather  than 
revolution. 

The  spectacle  of  seeing  diplomatists  and  governments  trifle  with  such 
things  as  Bolshevism  in  order  that  their  military  plans  may  be  successful 
is  nauseating,  to  say  the  least.  Yet  that  was  done.  What  the  quality  of 
government  may  be  is  best  adjudged  by  the  fact  that  governments  at  war 
use  machine  guns  on  their  own  unruly  elements,  while  in  the  country  of  the 
opponent  they  foster  that  very  thing  by  "literature"  delivered  from  aero- 
planes. In  Turkey  a  whole  race  was  driven  to  the  brink  of  oblivion  by 
the  agents  of  governments  who  thought  it  a  great  military  advantage  to 
have  the  Armenians  rise  in  rebellion  at  a  time  when  the  Ottoman  army 
was  engaged  otherwise.  That  this  was  not  to  the  interest  of  the  Armen- 
ians was  known  in  London  and  Paris,  but  it  was  to  the  "public  interest" 
of  the  Entente  governments. 

Such  are  the  forms  diplomacy  may  assume.  The  public  learns  of 
them  when  it  is  too  late,  and  when  in  the  current  of  life  it  has  drifted 
to  other  matters. 

I  have  dealt  very  charitably  with  diplomatists,  leaving  the  list  of 
their  failings  and  crimes  incomplete,  because  I  felt  that  the  very  pur- 
pose of  this  book  might  be  defeated  if  I  overcrowded  it  with  evidence 
that  man  has  been  living  in  a  fool's  paradise,  with  statesmen  and  diplo- 
matists as  gatekeepers,  and  censorship  and  the  like  an  insurmountable 
stockade. 

I  could  picture,  for  instance,  how  one  diplomatist  succeeded  his  pred- 
ecessor to  the  extent  that  even  the  mattresse  was  taken  over.  There  was 
a  diplomatist  who  supplied  the  ambassador  of  his  government's  enemy 
with  important  military  information,  in  order  that  the  latter  might  not 
lose  the  War.  In  another  case  it  was  proven  that  members  of  a  diplo- 
matic post  fostered  white  slave  traffic.  Another  diplomatist  was  the 
paramour  of  a  red-headed  Polish  countess  of  most  pleasing  appearance,  and, 
in  addition  to  the  confidences  of  love,  exchanged  those  of  the  state.  Still 
another  made  himself  the  laughing  stock  in  a  maison  de  plaisir.  There  was  a 
minister  who  used  to  shock  certain  circles  by  preaching  prohibition  with  a 
breath  that  reeked  of  alcohol,  and  there  was  another  diplomatist  who  one  day 
informed  a  citizen  at  his  post  that  he  would  set  his  house  afire  in  case  he 
did  not  stop  criticizing  His  High-Mightiness,  the  same  ambassador.  The 
citizen  went  and  filed  a  complaint  in  court,  and  the  government  concerned 
thought  it  proper  to  inform  the  diplomatist  that  arson  was  a  crime  even 
in  Berlin,  and  that  it  was  not  included  regularly  under  the  caption:  Dip- 
lomatic inviolability  and  privileges. 

There  is  one  more  episode  I  must  place  on  record. 

A  certain  diplomatist  was  known  as  a  man  fond  of  distinctions  and 


WHY  DIPLOMACY  SHOULD  GET  ITS  PASSPORT       383 

decorations.  There  was  one  (I  refrain  from  giving  the  name  of  the  order, 
lest  it  lead  to  the  identification  of  the  man)  he  wanted  particularly. 
It  was  a  so-called  ''grand  etoile"  of  a  little  kingdom,  and  quite  a  pretty 
bauble.  Hints  that  the  order  be  conferred  upon  the  diplomatist  had  never 
brought  the  decoration  nearer. 

So  the  man  decided  to  get  it  through  the  next  diplomatic  courier 
bound  for  a  certain  well-known  large  capital.  The  courier  did  as  directed. 
He  called  on  the  prominent  jeweler,  but  was  told  that  right  now  this  deco- 
ration was  not  in  stock,  the  last  specimen  having  been  sold  to  the  Khedive 
of  Egypt,  upon  whom  the  government  of  the  small  kingdom  had  con- 
ferred the  order  without  putting  real  diamonds  into  it.  Would  the 
courier  place  an  order?  The  man  did  not  know  what  to  do  and  decided 
to  consult  his  chef  de  mission  again  before  buying  the  thing  for  him. 

A  little  later  the  same  diplomatist  called  into  his  sanctuary  one  of 
his  men  servants,  giving  him  instructions  to  go  to  a  jeweler  dealing  in 
decorations  and  such,  and  buy  a  certain  order — one  of  the  highest  class — 
which  nobody  had  conferred  upon  him. 

The  servant  did  as  directed,  and  very  soon  returned  with  the  "great 
cross." 

Quite  satisfied  with  the  thing,  the  diplomatist  asked  the  servant  to 
pin  the  decoration  where  usually  it  was  worn.  The  two  men  stepped  before 
a  mirror,  and  within  a  few  moments  the  diplomatist  had  the  great  satis- 
faction of  being  actually  decorated,  though  by  the  servant,  albeit. 

Servant  and  master  were  on  close  terms,  though  not  of  the  same 
nationality,  and  for  the  space  of  minutes  the  diplomatist  thought  nothing 
of  preening  himself  before  the  mirror  and  the  servant  in  joyful  antici- 
pation of  what  friends  would  say  when  he  appeared  before  them  with 
this  mark  of  great  distinction. 

If  the  public  is  willing  to  rest  in  the  hands  of  such  men  its  weal  in 
peace  and  war,  then,  I  have  nothing  more  to  say,  except  that  it  does  seem 
foolish  to  expect  the  services  of  a  surgeon  from  a  butcher. 

The  Fourteen  Points  and  What  Became  of  Them 

I  have  hewn  straight  to  the  line  and  have  gone  to  the  core  of  things, 
influenced  by  neither  the  views  nor  wishes  of  the  few  remaining  frenzied 
patriots.  The  result  has  been  a  fairly  complete  political  history  of  the 
Great  War — a  true  history  for  the  reason  that  it  does  not  confound 
^v^  causes  with  pretexts,  or  judge  men  by  their  own  words  or  those  of  their 
friends. 

In  an  event  as  great  as  this  it  is  not  always  easy  to  remain  the  calm 
referee.    In  the  first  place  the  governments  are  against  anybody  remaining 


384  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

calm  and  thus  find  the  opportunity  to  smile  now  and  then  at  the  man  who 
transiently  in  power  deports  himself  as  though  he  were  Caesar  not  only 
of  his  own  for  all  time,  but  of  the  Universe  forever,  or  at  the  man  who, 
mistaking  his  own  brain  as  the  seat  of  all  causa  movens,  will  later  emerge 
from  the  passion-begotten  and  emotion-fostered  bedlam  of  war  as  the 
weak  tool  in  the  hands  of  others — at  best  a  sort  of  master  puppet. 

What  has  been  gained  by  this  war?  Let  us,  for  a  moment,  look  at 
the  thing  from  the  angle  of  the  Fourteen  Points,  a  sort  of  vague  platform 
upon  which  Mr.  Wilson  entered  the  Great  Adventure.  To  say  that  none 
of  the  Fourteen  Points  was  carried  through  is  not  correct.  In  fact  several 
of  the  points  were  applied.  But  they  would  have  been  applied  even  if 
Mr.  Wilson  had  not  come  out  for  them.  Point  VI  will  ultimately  find  such 
application  as  the  Russians  can  give  it.  That  Belgium  ought  to  be  restored 
went  without  saying  long  before  Mr.  Wilson  in  the  fall  of  1914  refused 
to  receive  a  delegation  of  Belgians  that  was  to  interest  him  in  the  fate 
of  their  country.  Point  VII  was  superfluous,  therefore.  It  would  seem 
that  the  question  of  Alsace-Lorraine  did  not  concern  the  President  of  the 
United  States  except  as  a  pretext  for  war,  and  it  would  seem  further 
that  the  people  of  Alsace-Lorraine  do  not  look  upon  the  occupation  of 
their  country  by  France  as  an  unmixed  blessing — at  least  the  Germanic 
element  in  the  country  is  not  satisfied  with  the  conduct  of  the  French. 
They  now  want  autonomy.     That  much  for  Point  VIII. 

Concerning  Point  IX  it  must  be  said  that  there  is  now  more  irredenta 
in  Italy  than  there  was  ever  in  Austria-Hungary.  Hundreds  of  thousands 
of  Germans  and  Slavs  have  been  handed  over  to  the  Italians,  and  these 
people  will  in  the  future  do  what  the  Italians  in  the  former  Danube 
Monarchy  have  done  in  the  past — work  for  their  liberation.  Point  X 
was  another  paragraph  Mr.  Wilson  could  have  left  out  of  his  list  of 
pretexts,  and  Point  XI  is  excellent  reading  and  nothing  more.  If  Mr. 
Wilson  thinks  that  a  platitude  such  as  this  would  settle  anything  in  the 
Balkans,  he  knows  of  the  Balkans  just  as  much  as  would  any  spectator 
to  "The  Chocolate  Soldier."  It  is  evident  that  Mr.  Wilson  is  not  qualified 
to  speak  of  the  Ottoman  empire — that  he  was  not  qualified  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  the  British  have  taken  this  matter  out  of  his  hands,  and  so 
Point  XII  vanishes.  What  good  Point  XIII  has  done  the  Poles  is  hard 
to  see,  since  their  independence  was  decided  upon  long  before  Mr.  Wilson 
was  heard  on  the  subject.  As  to  Point  XIV — it  would  seem  that  even 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States  does  not  want  "a  general  association  of 
nations  .  .  .  under  specific  covenants  for  the  purpose  of  affording 
mutual  guarantees  of  political  independence  and  territorial  integrity  to 
great  and  small  States  alike." 

Points  VI  to  XIV  were  either  buncombe  or  when  not  that,  the  mere 


THE  14  POINTS  AND  WHAT  BECAME  OF  THEM       385 

reverberation  of  some  Entente  policy.  The  true  Wilsonian  points  are  Points 
I  to  V.  We  know  what  has  become  of  open  covenants  of  peace,  openly 
arrived  at;  we  know  all  about  absolute  freedom  of  navigation  upon  the  seas; 
we  know  about  the  removal,  so  far  as  possible,  of  all  economic  barriers  and 
the  establishment  of  an  equality  of  trade  conditions  among  all  the  nations 
consenting  to  the  peace;  we  know  further  how  adequate  guarantees  (were) 
given  and  taken  that  national  armaments  will  be  reduced  to  the  lowest  point 
consistent  with  domestic  safety;  and  finally  we  know  very  well  there  was 
a  free,  open-minded,  and  absolutely  impartial  adjustment  of  all  colonial 
claims — to  Great  Britain.  To  that  country,  having  already  too  many 
colonies,  were  given  the  German  colonies,  the  colonies  of  a  people  that 
needed  room  more  than  any  other.  But,  then,  do  not  let  us  forget  that 
this  war  came  to  be  in  the  end  a  measure  for  the  artificial  and  forced  limita- 
tion of  German  growth  in  everything,  population  included. 

So  much  for  the  Fourteen  Points.  They  fared  at  the  hands  of  the 
British  and  French  as  did  the  Alexandrian  library  at  the  hands  of  the 
Saracenes.  The  invaders  burned  that  most  wonderful  collection  of  wisdom 
on  the  principle  that  whatever  there  was  good  in  it  was  already  in  the 
Koran,  and  whatever  there  was  in  it  that  was  not  in  the  Koran  ought  to 
be  destroyed  anyway. 

Of  course,  the  Fourteen  Points  had  their  uses,  and  having  them  they 
were  tolerated,  and  even  used,  by  the  Allies  for  a  time.  It  was  upon  the 
Fourteen  Points  and  its  promises  that  the  German  people  finally  turned 
against  its  government,  and  went  to  Mr.  Wilson  like  a  new  Messiah.  Mr. 
Wilson  had  said  that  he  had  no  grudge  against  the  German  people.  He 
was  against  the  Kaiser.  Mr.  Wilson  had  let  it  be  understood  that  he  would 
allow  none  to  be  hard  on  the  German  people.  But  the  Kaiser  would  have 
to  go.  The  Kaiser  went  in  a  manner  that  will  do  him  no  credit  with  the 
historian.  And  when  the  Kaiser  was  gone,  Germany  collapsed  in  the 
manner  of  the  Inca  State.  The  parallel  is  striking.  Two  manarchic 
absolutisms  resting  upon  state  socialism  come  to  end  by  the  single  blow 
of  ruthless  adventurers — two  conquistadores,  the  one  using  the  sword  and 
deception,  as  was  opportune  among  a  people  like  the  Peruvians,  the  other 
using  deception  and  the  sword,  as  conditions  in  Germany  required.  In  all 
faith,  only  a  person  of  the  lowest  scrupulosity  would  have  promised  so 
much  and  given  as  little  as  did  the  author  of  the  Fourteen  Points. 

The  Hohenzollern  made  his  exit  as  ingloriously  as  the  last  of  the  Incas 
— in  fact  the  Son  of  the  Sun  did  much  better.  And  after  that  the  German 
people  was  to  discover  that  the  promises  of  the  Fourteen  Points  were 
chaff  and  not  the  grain  they  had  looked  for,  especially  after  a  gang  of 
political  opportunists  of  the  Erzberger  and  Bauer  types  had  shown  its 
readiness  to  sign  anything  that  was  put  before  them. 


386  THE  CRAF^T  SINISTER 

The  Peace  negotiations  being  entirely  under  the  influence  of  the 
British  and  French,  results  could  not  be  other  than  they  are.  The  British 
added  to  their  holdings  every  German  colony  of  importance,  made  sure 
of  their  grip  upon  Egypt,  gained  control  of  most  of  Southwest  Asia  and 
sat  themselves  more  securely  than  ever  on  the  shores  of  the  Dardanelles 
and  Bosphorus.  Quite  incidentally,  of  course,  their  peculiar  brand  of 
Maritime  Law  was  humbly  acknowledged  to  be  the  proper  one  by  the 
Paris  Peace  Conference,  Today,  more  than  ever  before,  Britannia  rules 
the  waves — her  rule  on  land  and  sea,  in  fact,  is  absolute. 

Of  course,  the  French  gained  something  also.  Alsace-Lorraine,  for 
example,  and  the  prospect  of  a  large  indemnity,  with  all  sorts  of  domestic 
animals  and  implements,  and  such,  thrown  in.  At  no  Peace  Conference  was 
business  instinct  so  displayed  and  exercised.  And  there  was  occasion  for 
this.  The  French  felt  that  this  might  be  their  last  opportunity  to  impose 
upon  the  Germans  their  will. 

It  is  as  hard  to  say  what  will  be  tomorrow  in  the  life  of  nations  as 
it  is  to  predict  an)rthing  for  the  individual,  especially  if  both  are  not  in 
the  best  of  health.  And  France  is  not  in  the  best  of  health.  Though  the 
Great  War  has  shown  that  her  men  are  still  able  to  fight  as  valiantly  as 
of  yore,  the  fact  is  that  they  and  their  women  have  lost  interest  in 
propagation.  It  is  d  la  mode  in  France  to  have  one  or  two  children  so 
that  it  or  they  may  not  have  the  hard  struggle  the  parents  had.  The 
sensible  human  being  can  not  but  sympathize  with  such  a  policy,  and  in 
ages  to  come  that  policy  will  be  generally  adopted.  But  right  now  it  is 
a  case  of  France  with  her  declining  birth  rate,  and  Germany  with  a  most 
prolific  population,  trying  to  get  along  with  one  another. 

Such  being  the  case,  M.  Clemenceau  and  his  associates  tried  to  give 
France  a  sort  of  life  insurance  by  hamstringing  the  Germans  for  decades. 
It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  so  artificial  a  means  can  influence  for  long 
so  natural  a  force.  In  1870  there  was  between  the  two  peoples  a  numerical 
difference  of  only  three  millions.  Since  then  the  39  million  Germans  have 
increased  to  about  69  millions  in  Germany,  while  the  French  number  not 
quite  40  millions.  In  addition  to  that  about  12  million  Germans  emigrated, 
so  that  with  their  oflFspring  the  Germans  since  1870  have  increased  to  about 
90  millions,  while  the  French  within  the  same  period  grew  in  number  to 
about  45  millions,  emigration  to  the  French  colonies  and  elsewhere  included. 
It  is  hard  to  see  how  a  population  like  the  French,  given  to  love  of 
comfort  and  great  providence  can  in  the  end  exist  beside  a  nation  like  the 
German,  ready  to  get  along  with  what  it  has,  but  not  averse  to  taking  what 
it  needs.  Of  course,  it  can  be  done.  But  needless  to  say,  if  it  is  done,  the 
chauvinist  and  jingo  will  not  be  responsible  for  a  change  in  that  policy 
which  for  centuries  has  led  to  wars  between  the  two  peoples.     It  would 


THE  14  POINTS  AND  WHAT  BECAME  OE  THEM        387 

be  well  for  some  to  remember  that  a  swash-buckling  Frenchman  is  no  more 
lovely  a  spectacle  than  a  sabre-rattling  Prussian,  and  that  much  which  is 
said  concerning  la  gr-r-r-rande  nation  is  gasconnade  pure  and  simple.  It 
should  be  borne  in  mind  by  all  concerned  that  the  next  time  it  may  be 
different,  and  that  it  is  best  not  to  have  a  next  time. 

The  Great  War  has  shown  in  every  quarter  how  absolute  a  master 
government  may  become.  Parliaments  everywhere  became  phonographic 
records  of  the  Master's  voice  sort;  every  executive  an  autocrat.  And 
it  will  take  some  time  before  the  effect   of   this  is  totally  eliminated. 

Uappetit  vient  en  mangeant. 

It  is  time  that  the  several  publics  leading  the  human  procession  returned 
to  a  more  decent  conception  of  government — the  principle  that  government 
does  not  exist  for  the  sake  of  those  who  form  it — the  politician  unable 
or  unwilling  to  make  a  living  in  some  other  way.  Government  has  in  all 
of  the  warring  countries  doubled  and  trebled,  and  the  sooner  a  general 
lopping  off  of  these  parasites  sets  in  the  better  it  will  be.  The  public 
everywhere  should  come  to  realize  that  government  in  a  free  community 
can  never  be  more  than  the  means  of  administering  those  affairs  of  the  body 
politic  which  it  cannot  manage  itself. 

The  ideal  state  is  the  one  in  which  no  government  is  needed.  Let 
us  get  as  close  to  the  ideal  state  as  possible  by  putting  our  affairs  in  such 
shape,  and  conducting  ourselves  so  well,  that  we  can  get  along  with  the 
very  minimum  in  government.  Unfortunate  indeed  is  the  people  whose 
public  administration  intrudes  as  much  into  private  life  as  government  has 
done  everywhere  in  the  last  five  years — even  in  these  supposedly  free 
United  States.  Government  by  inspection  and  coercion  has  been  the  rule 
everywhere,  while  the  blatant  heads  thereof  announced  that  they  intended 
making  this  world  safe  for  democracy.  A  return  to  common  sense  on  the 
part  of  everybody  is  the  only  thing  that  will  save  mankind  from  becoming 
as  erratic  as  some  of  its  leaders  have  become.  It  were  well  for  all  to 
remember  that  civilization  is  a  matter  of  restraint  and  not  an  orgy  in  hold- 
^   ing  much  and  wanting  more. 


The  End. 


APPENDIX 


Treaty  of  Alliance  of  1279  B.  C. 

I  APPEND  here  the  text  of  the  oldest  treaty  extant  in  toto  to  afford  such  com- 
parisons as  the  reader  may  wish  to  make. 

The  date  of  the  treaty  is  Tybi,  21,  xxi,  in  the  reign  of  Rameses  II,  Pharaoh  of 
Egypt,  or  November  28th,  1279  B.  C.  Rameses  II  is  one  of  the  high-contracting 
parties,  and  Kheta-sar,  king  of  the  Hittites,  represented  by  ambassadors  Tarte-sebu 
and  Rames,  is  the  other.  The  "anu"  or  treaty  was  engraved  upon  tablets  of  silver 
and  in  this  manner  exchange  of  the  copies  was  effected. 

"In  the  city  of  Pa-Ramessu-mery-Amen,  Tybi  21,  xxi. 

"The  ordinance  made  by  the  great  chief  of  Kheta,  Kheta-sar  the  mighty;  the 
son  of  Marsar,  the  great  chief  of  the  Kheta,  the  mighty;  the  son  of  Saparuru,  the 
great  chief  of  the  Kheta,  the  mighty;  on  a  declaration  tablet  of  silver,  to  Ra-user- 
maat,  the  great  prince  of  Egypt,  the  mighty;  the  son  of  Ra-men-maat,  the  great 
prince  of  Egypt,  the  mighty;  the  son  of  the  son  of  Ra-men-peh,  the  great  prince 
ol  Egypt,  the  mighty. 

"The  good  ordinances  of  peace  and  of  the  brotherhood,  giving  peace     . 
(are  to   last)    eternally,   even   from  the  beginning  to   the   end   eternally,   even  the 
agreement  of  the  great  prince  of  Egypt  with  the  great  prince  of  Kheta;  may  God 
grant  that  there  shall  never  come  enmity  between  them,  according  to  the  ordinances. 

"Now,  in  times  past  Mauthnuro,  my  brother,  fought  with  (Rameses  II)  great 
prince  of  Egypt.  But  now  and  hereafter,  beginning  from  this  day,  behold  Kheta-sar, 
the  great  chief  of  the  Kheta,  ordains  to  affirm  the  decree  made  by  Ra  and  made 
by  Sutekh,  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  the  land  of  Kheta  [the  supreme  deities]  to 
prevent  the  coming  of  enmities  forever. 

"Kheta-sar  agrees  with  Ramessu  that  there  shall  be  good  peace  and  brotherhood 
between  them  forever.  He  shall  fraternize  with  me  and  be  at  peace,  and  I  shall 
fraternize  with  him  and  be  at  peace,  forever. 

"After  the  time  of  Mauthnuro,  after  he  was  killed,  Kheta-sar  sat  himself,  as 
the  great  prince  of  the  Kheta,  on  the  throne  of  his  father.  Behold  after  it  there 
is  peace  and  brotherhood,  better  than  the  peace  and  the  brotherhood  that  was  before 
in  the  land. 

"The  chief  of  the  Kheta  will  be  with  Ramessu  in  good  peace  and  in  good 
fellowship.  The  children  of  the  children  of  the  chief  shall  fraternize  peacefully  with 
the  sons  of  the  sons  of  Ramessu. 

"By  our  brotherhood  and  agreement  .  .  .  (the  land  of  Egypt  shall  be) 
with  the  land  of  Kheta  in  peace  and  brotherhood  altogether  forever.  Never  shall 
enmity  come  to  separate  them,  forever. 

"Never  shall  the  chief  of  the  Kheta  make  an  invasion  of  the  land  of  Egypt, 
forever,  to  carry  off  anything  from  it. 

"Never  shall  Ramessu  make  an  invasion  of  the  land  of  the  Kheta  to  carry  off 
anything  from  it,  forever. 

"Now  the  equitable  treaty  which  remained  from  the  time  of  Saparuru,  likewise 
the  equitable  treaty  which  remained  from  the  time  of  Mauthnuro  .  .  .  (Massar?) 
my  father,  I  will  fulfill  it.  Behold  Ramessu  will  fulfill  .  .  .  (it,  and  we  agree) 
with  one  another  together,  beginning  in  this  day,  we  will  fulfill  it,  performing  it 
in  an  equitable  manner. 

"Now,  if  an  enemy  shall  come  to  the  land  of  Ramessu,  let  him  send  a  message 
to  the  chief  of  the  Kheta  to  say :  'Come  to  me  with  forces  against  him,'  and 
the  chief  of  the  Kheta  shall  come  to  smite  his  enemies.  But  if  the  chief  has 
never  a  heart  to  march,  he  shall  send  his  soldiers  and  his  chariots  to  smite  the 
enemy  or  Ramessu  will  be  angry.     Or  if  the  servants  of  the  gates   (the  frontier 

389 


390  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

tribes)  shall  make  a  raid  on  him,  and  he  shall  go  to  smite  them,  the  chief  of  the 
Kheta  shall  act  with  the  prince  of  Egypt" 

Here  follows  a  reciprocal  clause  obliging  the  prince  of  Egypt  to  do  the  same  if 
the  chief  of  the  Kheta  sends  a  call   for  help. 

"If  there  be  one  from  the  city,  if  there  be  one  from  the  pastures,  if  there 
be  one  from  the  .  .  .  (desert?)  of  the  land  of  Ramessu,  and  they  shall  come 
to  the  chief  of  the  Kheta,  never  shall  the  chief  receive  them,  but  shall  give  them 
back  to  Ramessu;  if  there  be  one  of  the  people,  or  if  there  be  two  of  the  people 
who.  unknown,  shall  come  to  the  land  of  the  Kheta  to  do  service  for  another,  never 
shall  they  be  allowed  to  stay  in  the  land  of  the  Kheta,  but  shall  be  returned  to 
Ramessu,  or  if  there  be  one  great  man  coming  to  the  land  of  the  Kheta,  he  shall 
be  returned  to  Ramessu." 

This  earliest  known  instance  of  preventing  transfer  of  allegiance  is -reciprocal 
in  the  same  terms. 

"These  words  which  are  upon  the  declaration  tablet  of  silver  of  the  land  of  the 
Kheta  and  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  whoever  shall  not  keep  them  may  the  thousand 
gods  of  the  Kheta,  along  with  the  thousand  gods  of  Egypt,  bring  to  ruin  his  house. 
his  lands,  and  his  servants.  But  whoever  shall  keep  these  words,  may  the  thousand 
gods  of  the  Kheta,  along  with  the  thousand  gods  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  give  health 
to  him.  give  life  to  him,  with  his  house,  with  his  lands  and  with  his  servants. 

"If  there  shall  flee  one  of  the  people  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  if  there  be  two. 
if  there  be  three,  and  come  to  the  chief  of  the  Kheta,  he  shall  take  them  and  send 
them  back  to  Ramessu.  And  any  of  the  people  who  are  taken  and  sent  back  to 
Ramessu.  let  it  not  be  that  his  criminal  action  is  raised  against  him,  in  giving  to 
destruction  his  house,  his  wives,  or  his  children,  on  in  slaying  him,  or  in  removing 
his  eyes,  or  his  ears,  or  his  mouth  [tongue]  or  his  feet,  and  he  shall  not  have  any 
criminal  action  raised  against  him." 

This  agreement  of  extradition,  for  the  times  unusually  high-minded,  is  recipro- 
cally stated  also,  in  minute  similarity  of  terms. 

"That  which  is  on  this  tablet  of  silver,  on  the  front  side,  is  the  engraved  imapre 
of  Sutekh,  embracing  the  great  chief  of  the  Kheta,  around  it  are  the  words,  saying: 
The  seal  of  Sutekh,  the  prince  of  heaven,  the  seal  of  ordinance  by  Kheta-sar.  the 
great  chief  of  the  Kheta,  the  mighty;  the  son  of  Marsar,  the  great  chief  of  the 
Kheta.  the  mighty.' 

"That  which  is  within  the  surrounding  engraving  is  the  seal  of  Sutekh,  the  prince 
of  heaven. 

"That  which  on  this  side  is  engraved,  is  the  image  of  the  god  of  the  Kheta, 
embracing  the  figure  of  the  great  queen  of  the  Kheta ;  around  it  are  the  words,  saying : 
The  seal  of  the  sun  of  the  city  of  Aranna,  the  lord  of  the  land,  the  seal  of  Puukhipa, 
the  great  queen  of  the  land  of  the  Kheta,  the  daughter  of  the  land  of  Quiza     . 
(Nadanna,  queen  of)  Aranna,  the  mistress  of  the  land,  the  servant  of  the  goddess.' 

"That  which  is  within  the  surrounding  engraving  is  the  seal  of  the  sun  of 
Aranna,  the  lord  of  all  the  land." 

The  texts  of  the  older  treaties  referred  to  are  unknown.  The  agreements, 
however,  seem  to  have  been  made  between  Marsar  of  Kheta  and  Sety  I  of  Egypt, 
and  Saparuru  of  Kheta  and  Horemheb  of  Egypt.  To  make  this  treaty  all  the  more 
binding.  Kheta-sar  seems  to  have  given  in  marriage  to  Rameses  II  a  daughter, 
named  Neferu-ra.  according  to  a  stele  found  at  Abu-Simbel.  The  lady  was  the 
favorite  wife  of  Rameses  and  appears  with  him  on  all  his  monuments. 

The  manv  "forevers"  of  the  treaty  became  no  forever,  of  course.  An  inscription 
at  Medinet  Habu,  shows  Rameses  III  (1202-1170^  receiving  the  hands  of  slain 
Hittites,  and  the  text  claims  that  the  chief  of  the  Kheta  had  formed  a  coalition  of 
the  people  of  Northern  Syria  against  the  Egyptians.  In  the  course  of  time  the 
international  policies  of  Kheta  and  Egypt  had  undergone  changes,  and  so  it  came 
that  the  terms  of  the  Treaty  of  Pa-Ramessu-mery-Amen,  November  28th,  1279  B.  C. 
had  lost  their  value  and  binding  force. 

Centuries  later  the  wrath  of  the  thousand  gods  of  the  Kheta  and  the  thousand 
gods  of  the  Egyptians  did  indeed  descend  upon  both  peoples,  but  it  would  not 
seem  reasonable  to  assume  that  the  invocation  of  the  "anu"  had  anything  to  do  with 
that,  or  that  the  Persians  had  been  selected  as  the  means  of  punishment  by  the  princes 
of  heaven. 


B 

The  Battle  of  Kadesh 

(After  M.  ChampolHon's  Translation  of  the  Original  Hieroglyphic  Text.) 

BY  way  of  introducing  this  very  interesting  but  hardly  known  document 
from  Old  Egypt,  I  wish  to  say  that  I  have  been  unable  to  establish 
beyond  all  cavil  whether  the  Battle  of  Kadesh  preceded  the  peace  treaty 
just  given  and  discussed,  or  terminated  it,  in  which  event  we  must  take  it  for 
granted  that  Rameses  II  did  not  have  enough  time,  before  his  death,  to  change 
the  inscriptions  and  reliefs  that  dealt  with  things  related  to  the  land  and  the 
princes  of  the  Kheta-  One  thing  alone  is  certain,  the  Rameses  of  the 
Peace  Treaty  is  the  Rameses  of  the  account  of  the  Battle  of  Kadesh,  and 
when  I  take  pains  to  refer  to  it,  I  do  so  with  regret,  since  in  treating  "The 
Battle  of  Kadesh"  I  will  have  to  seem  disrespectful  to  one  of  the  great  figures 
in  the  story  of  mankind,  for  such  Rameses  II  undoubtedly  is.  But  I  would 
warn  the  reader  not  to  forget  that  of  yore,  as  today,  even  the  honest  and 
righteous  among  the  great  were  often  obliged  to  take  recourse  to  trickery  and 
charlatanisms  in  order  to  secure  their  positions  for  the  very  benefit  of  those 
against  whose  will  and  for  whose  good  the  position  had  to  be  held.  The 
phrase  is  a  little  involved,  to  be  sure,  but  nothing  will  be  lost  by  thinking 
it  over. 

The  old  papyrus  reads  as  follows: 

The  ninth  day  of  the  third  month  of  the  season  shemu*  in  the  fifth 
year  of  the  reign  of  Horus-Ra,  THE  MIGHTY  BULL,  BELOVED  OF 
MAAT,  the  king  of  the  North  and  South,  USER-MAAT-RA-SETEP-EN-RA, 
the  son  of  the  Sun,  RAMESES  BELOVED  OF  AMEN,  the  giver  of  life 
forever. 

Behold  now,  his  Majesty  was  in  the  country  of  Tchah  on  his  second 
expedition  of  victory.  A  good  look-out  [was  kept]**  in  life,  strength  and 
health,  in  the  camp  of  his  Majesty  on  the  southern  side  of  the  city  of  Kadesh. 
His  Majesty  rose  up  like  Ra  and  put  on  the  ornaments  of  the  god  Menthu,  and 
the  lord  continued  on  his  journey  and  arrived  at  the  southern  border  of  the 
city  of  Shabtun.  And  two  members  of  the  Shasu  people  came  and  spoke  to 
his  Majesty,  saying: 

"Our  brethren,  who  are  among  the  chiefs  of  the  tribes  who  are  in  league 
with  the  abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta,  have  made  us  come  to  his  Majesty 
to  say:  *We  are  [ready]  to  render  service  to  Pharaoh  (life,  health  and 
strength!)  and  they  have  broken  with  the  abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta. 
Now  the  abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta  is  encamped  in  the  land  of  Aleppo, 
to  the  north  of  the  country  of  Tunep,  and  he  is  afraid  to  advance,  because 
of  Pharaoh  (life,  health  and  strength  1).'" 

In  this  wise  did  the  Shasu  speak,  but  they  spoke  to  his  Majesty  lying 
words,  for  the  abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta  had  made  them  come  to  spy 
out  the  place  where  his  Majesty  was,  so  that  he  might  not  be  able  to  arrange 
his  forces  in  a  proper  way  to  do  battle  with  the  abominable  prince  of  the 
Kheta.t 

And  behold,  the  abominable  chief  of  the  Kheta  had  come  together  with 


*  Which    is    summer. 

**  Matter  in  brackets  shows  where  original  text  imperfect  or  damaged,  necessitating  an  inter- 
polation to  connect  or  complete  contents.     Matter  in  parentheses  was  so  treated  in  original  text. 

t  A  very  fine  piece  of  after-the-fact  writing,  but  a  little  too  obvious  since  the  spying  out 
of  the_  place  could  not  in  any  manner  interfere  with  the  arranging  of  troops  by  the  Pharaoh. 
Still,  in  our  own  days,  the  propagandists  of  governments  have  expected  no  less  of  the  guUiMe 
public. 

391 


392  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

the  chiefs  of  every  district,  and  with  the  footmen,  and  with  the  cavalry  whom 
he  had  brought  with  him  in  mighty  numbers,  and  they  stood  ready  to  fight, 
drawn  up  in  ambush  behind  the  abominable  city  of  Kadesh,  his  Majesty  having 
no  knowledge  whatsoever  of  these  plans.* 

So  his  Majesty  marched  on  and  arrived  at  the  north-east  side  of  the 
abominable  city  of  Kadesh,  and  then  he  and  his  troops  encamped.  Now  his 
Majesty  was  sitting  on  his  smu  metal  throne  when  two  of  the  spies  who  were 
in  the  service  of  his  Majesty  brought  in  two  spies  of  the  abominable  chief  of 
the  Kheta,  and  when  they  had  been  led  into  his  presence  his  Majesty  said  to 
them: 

"Who  and  what  are  ye?" 

And  they  replied: 

"We  belong  to  the  abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta,  who  made  us  come  to 
see  where  his  Majesty  was!" 

His  Majesty  said  to  them: 

"Where  is  the  abominable  chief  of  the  Kheta?  Verily,  I  have  heard  that 
he  is  in  the  country  of  Aleppo!" 

They  replied: 

"Behold,  the  abominable  chief  of  the  Kheta  standeth  [ready]  and  multi- 
tudes [of  the  peoples]  of  the  district  are  with  him;  he  has  brought  them  with 
him  in  vast  numbers  from  all  the  provinces  of  the  country  of  the  Kheta,  and 
from  the  country  of  Mesopotamia,  and  from  the  whole  country  of  Qetti. 
They  are  provided  with  footmen  and  with  cavalry  fully  equipped,  and  they 
are  like  the  sand  of  the  sea  shore  for  multitude;**  and  behold,  they  are  drawn 
up  in  fighting  order  but  are  concealed  behind  the  abominable  city  of  Kadesh." 

Then  his  Majesty  caused  his  chief  officers  to  be  called  into  his  presence 
that  he  might  make  them  know  every  matter  which  the  two  spies  of  the 
abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta  who  had  been  before  him  had  spoken.  And 
his  Majesty  spake  unto  them,  saying: 

"Enquire  into  the  actions  of  the  officers  of  the  peoples  and  of  the  chiefs 
of  the  districts  where  Pharaoh  (life,  health  and  strength!)  is  [encamped]." t 

They  did  so  and  reported  to  Pharaoh,  (life,  health  and  strength!)  that  the 
abominable  chief  of  the  Kheta  was  in  the  land  of  Aleppo,  whither  he  had  to 
flee  before  his  Majesty  as  soon  as  he  had  heard  the  report  of  him,  and  that, 
indeed,  [the  officers  and  chiefs]  should  have  reported  these  things  correctly 
to  his   Majesty,    [and  his   Majesty  replied:] 

"See  now  what  I  have  made  you  to  know  at  this  time  through  the  two 
spies  of  the  country  of  the  Kheta,  namely  that  the  abominable  chief  of  the 
Kheta  hath  come  together  with  [the  peoples  of]  a  multitude  of  countries,  and 
with  men  and  with  horses,  like  the  sand  for  multitude,  and  that  they  are 
standing  behind  the  abominable  city  of  Kadesh;  is  it  possible  that  the  officers 
of  the  districts  and  the  princes  of  the  country  wherein  Pharaoh  (life,  health 
and  strength!)  now  is — under  whose  direction  the  district  is — did  not  know 
this?"t  -T-.!-^ 

Now  when  these  things  had  been  said  to  them,  the  officers  who  were  in 
the  presence  of  his  Majesty  admitted  that  the  officers  of  the  country  and  the 
princes  of  Pharaoh  (life,  health  and  strength!)  had  committed  a  gross  breach 


Rather  naive,  to  be  sure!  Though  Rameses  II  is  the  invader  it  is  abominable  on  the  part 
of  the  prince  of  Kheta  to  take  the  necessary  military  measures  without  taking  the  Pharaoh  into 
his  confidence.  And  still,  quite  recently  we  have  seen  the  same  views  expressed,  with  the 
difference  that  we  did  not  stop  with  the  use  of  the  word  abominable,  but  went  much  further, 
which  may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  in  our  days  writing  and  printing  is  so  much  easier, 
and  the  violation  of  all  rules  of  decency  so  much  facilitated  thereby. 

••  The  words  are  laid  in  the  mouth  of  the  two  spies  by  either  a  propagandist  of  the  Royal 
Egyptian  Government,  or  by  the  press  agent  of  His  Majesty,  Rameses  II. 

t  Reminds  somewhat  of  the  proposed  trial  of  former  Emperor  William  II  and  many  of  his 
officers   and   subjects. 

t  Rameses  II  must  have  been  a  very  patient  man,  if  he  clothed  his  opinion  in  such  temperate 
words.  It  would  seem  that  we  deal  instead  with  a  convenient  method  of  reminding  the  reader 
that  his  Majesty  had  a  poor  general  staff  and  was  opposed  by  an  army  as  multitudinous  as  the 
sands  of  the  sea  shore.  Accomplishing  so  much  with  so  little  would  leave  to  Rameses  II  so 
much  more  glory.     It's  an  old  ruse! 


THE  BATTLE  OF  KADESH  393 

of  duty  in  not  reporting  to  them  the  various  places  to  which  the  abominable 
chief  of  the  Kheta  had  marched.  * 

And  it  came  to  pass  that  when  they  had  spoken,  his  Majesty  issued  an 
order  for  the  officers  who  were  in  charge  of  the  troops  that  were  marching  to 
the  south  of  Shabtun  to  bring  their  troops  as  rapidly  as  possible  to  the  place 
where  his  Majesty  was.  Now  whilst  his  sacred  Majesty  was  sitting  and  talking 
with  his  officers,  the  abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta  came  together  with  his 
footmen  and  cavalry,  and  the  multitudes  of  peoples  who  were  with  him,  and 
they  crossed  over  the  canal  at  the  south  of  Kadesh  and  came  upon  the  soldiers 
of  his  Majesty  who  were  marching  along  in  ignorance  of  what  was  happening,  t 

Then  the  footmen  and  cavalry  of  his  Majesty  lost  their  courage  and  rushed 
on  headlong  to  where  his  Majesty  was,  and  the  troops  of  the  abominable 
prince  of  the  Kheta  surrounded  the  servants  who  were  around  his  Majesty. 
When  his  Majesty  saw  them  he  raged  at  them  like  his  father  Menthu,  the 
lord  of  Thebes,  and,  putting  on  his  armor  and  seizing  a  spear,  like  the  god 
Baru  in  his  moment,  he  mounted  his  horse  and  dashed  forward  alone  among 
the  troops  of  the  abominable  prince  of  the  Kheta  and  among  the  multitudes 
which  he  had  with  him.**  His  Majesty,  like  the  most  mighty  god  Sutekh,  made 
slaughter  among  them,  and  he  cut  them  down  dead  into  the  waters  of  the 
Orontes.ft 

[He  saith:] 

"I  conquered  all  countries.  I  was  quite  alone,  my  footmen  and  cavalry 
had  forsaken  me,  and  no  man  among  them  dared  to  come  back  [to  save]  my 
life.  But  Ra  loved  me,  and  my  father  Tmu  had  a  favor  for  me,  and  everything 
which  my  Majesty  hath  said  I  performed  in  very  truth  before  my  footmen 
and  my  cavalry."  $ 


*  We  may  easily  agree  with  this.  The  intelligence  service  of  Rameses  II  was  not  the  best, 
evidently.  But  it  would  seem  that  the  writer  dwells  too  purposely  on  this,  in  order  to  prepare 
us   for  the  great  heroics  that  are  to  come. 

t  It  is  hardly  true  that  these  troops  were  in  ignorance  of  what  was  happening,  even  if  they 
are  not  the  force  which  Rameses  II  had  ordered  to  come  to  his  headquarters.  It  is  well- 
known  that  the  Egyptian  military  system  of  that  period  was  a  very  good  one,  and  the  great 
value  of  flankers,  vanguard  and  rearguard  was  even  then  very  generally  understood.  We  deal 
here  entirely  with  a  very  tendencious  account  of  something  which  may  or  which  may  not  have 
taken   place. 

**  The  royal  press  agents  of  Old  all  had  the  fine  habit  of  having  their  masters  sit  at  leisure, 
with  their  wives  and  concubines,  when  not  with  their  general  staff  members,  as  the  hostile  army 
swoops  down  upon  the  camp.  Naturally,  the  king,  thus  taken  advantage  of,  had  to  lose  more  time 
putting  on  his  armor — which,  by  the  way,  was  usually  a  matter  of  at  least  two  minutes. 

tt  A  very  fishy  account,  begging  the  pardon  of  the  reader  for  this  use  of  slang.  His  Majesty 
alone  does  all  these  things.  No  doubt,  the  Hittite  troops  allowed  him  to  cut  them  down  without 
lifting  even  a  little  finger  in  self-defense. 

t  An  account  of  what  actually  took  place  is  not  to  be  had,  of  course.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
his  Majesty  did  draw  the  long  bow — and  usually  he  is  pictured  that  way,  standing  in  his  chariot 
and  pointing  the  arrow_  over  the  heads  of  his  prancing  horses.  I  am  sure,  the  shades  of 
Rameses  II,  together  with  the  Kha  of  his  soul,  will  forgive  me,  if  I  say  that  this  may  be 
literature,  but  is  not  Ristory.  But  it  was  ever  thus.  One  does  not  have  to  be  omniscient  to 
feel  that  usually  there  is  too  much  literature  in  what  purports  to  be  history,  especially  such 
history  as  was  peddled  by  George  Creel,  the  Pelmanite,  formerly  in  charge  of  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  "Information."  And  who,  RAMESES  BELOVED  OF  AMEN,  doubted  all  this  so 
that  thou  hadst  to  call  upon  thine  footmen  and  cavalry  to  vouch  for  thee?  Was  it  thine  own  guilty 
Kha?  At  that  we  sympathize  with  thee,  as  we  should,  seeing  that  we  have  come  to  pass  judgment 
upon  the  words  of  a  mighty  king,  son  of  the  Sun,  in  an  age  in  which  the  office  is  one  thing  and 
the  man  another.      Incidentally,   some  credit  had  to  be  given  the   Gods. 


'^League  of  Peace"  of  1518-19  A.  D. 

FOR  the  purpose  of  combating  the  Turk  it  was  decided  in  1518,  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  Franco-British  wars  of  the  period,  to  form  what  we  in  our  days 
would  style  a  "League  of  Nations."  The  contracting  parties  were  the  Pope, 
the  Emperor  Elect  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  (Germany  and  Austria),  the  King 
of  France,  the  King  of  Spain  and  the  King  of  England.  Before  the  treaty  was 
ratified,  Pope  Leo  X,  and  King  Charles  of  Spain,  were  grown  lukewarm  toward  it, 
the  former  because  he  was  "deeply  mortified  that  the  office  of  mediator  and  peace 
maker  had  thus  passed  from  the  Holy  See  to  the  chancellor  of  England,"  Lord 
Thomas   Wolsey. 

Of  the  treaty,  which  was  a  dead  letter  within  two  years,  only  the  relevant 
parts  are  here  given: 

"2.  As  far  as  the  defense  of  the  Christian  Church  and  the  Pope,  or  of  the 
states  and  possessions  of  any  one  of  the  contracting  princes  is  concerned,  all  the 
members  of  the  league  are  to  be  "friends  of  the  friends  and  foes  of  the  foes"  of 
any  one  of  them. 

"H  any  one  of  the  contracting  parties  or  of  those  who  are  included  in  this 
treaty  attacks,  invades  or  does  any  other  injury  to  the  states,  dominions,  towns, 
castles,  etc.  of  any  other  member  of  this  league,  or  any  prince  who  is  included  in 
this  treaty,  the  injured  party  is  at  liberty  to  require  by  letters  patent  the  aid  of 
■all  the  other  contracting  parties.  Those  who  are  thus  requested  are  bound,  together 
with  the  injured  party,  to  send  letters  and  ambassadors  to  the  aggressor  or  aggressors, 
asking  him  or  them  to  desist  from  further  hostilities,  and  to  make  full  reparation. 

"If  the  aggressor  or  aggressors  continue§/  or  continue  his  or  their  hostilities 
in  spite  of  this  exhortation  to  maintain  peace,  or  if  he  or  they  refuses  or  refuse  to 
make  full  reparation,  all  the  other  confederates  are  bound  to  declare  war  with  the 
aggressor  or  the  aggressors  within  one  month  after  being  summoned  to  do  so. 
Within  two  months  after  the  declaration  of  war,  they  are  to  begin  actual  hostilities 
by  attacking  or  invading  the  dominions  of  the  aggressor  or  aggressors  with  an  army 
strong  enough  to  conquer  the  enemy.  Every  one  of  the  contracting  parties  is  bound 
to  pay  his  own  expenses." 

It  seems  proper  to  draw  attention  here  to  the  fact  that  the  "one  month"  and 
"two  months"  terms  were  necessitated  by  the  absence  in  those  days  of  rapid  com- 
munication and  transportation. 

The  treaty  continues: 

"12.  All  former  treaties  remain  in  full  force,  except  in  so  far  as  they  are 
in  contradiction  to  this  treaty. 

"13.  All  Christian  princes  are  at  liberty  to  declare,  within  the  space  of  eight 
months,  their  intention  to  become  members  of  this  league,  in  which  case  the  principal 
contracting  parties  are  bound  to  accept  them  and  to  defend  them,  at  the  expense, 
however,  of  the  party  asking  to  be  assisted. 

"14.  The  Kings  of  France  and  of  England,  who  are  the  originators  of  this 
league,  bind  themselves  toward  one  another  that,  if  either  of  them  be  invaded  or 
attacked  by  any  Prince  or  Power,  the  other  will  lead  in  person  the  army  which 
is  to  assist  the  attacked  prince.  Even  if  none  of  the  other  Christian  princes  should 
become  members  of  the  league,  it  is  to  remain  in  full  force  so  far  as  England  and 
France  are  concerned." 

Article  one  of  the  treaty  is  the  preamble,  declaring  that  the  league,  which  is 
referred  to  as  "holy,"  is  to  combat  the  "tyrant  of  the  Turk,"  and  that  the  immediate 
aim  of  the  treaty^  is  the  establishment  of  a  general  peace  in  the  Christian  world, 
and  that  good  will  is  to  be  maintained  among  the  members  of  the  league.  The 
other  articles  of  the  treaty  apportion  the  military  and  naval  obligations  of  the 
several  contracting  parties,  deal  with  the  conduct  to  be  observed  in  case  of  rebellion 
by  subjects  against  their  governments,  fix  the  status  of  troops  marching  through  the 
territory  of  a  confederate,  and  are  generally  uninteresting. 

394 


The  Entento-Italian  Agreement  of  1915 

S  an  instance  of  what  "secret  treaties"  of  the  annexation  type  are,  I  will 
k  reproduce  here  the  agreement  made  between  the  British,  French  and  Russian 
*"  governments,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Italian  government,  on  the  other. 

"The  Italian  ambassador,  Marquis  Imperial!,  under  instructions  of  his 
government,  has  the  honor  to  deliver  to  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
Sr.  E.  Grey,  the  French  ambassador  and  the  Russian  ambassador. 
Count   Benckendorf,   the   following  memorandum: 

2.  On  her  side  Italy  obligates  herself,  with  all  the  forces  at  her  command, 
to  enter  into  the  campaign  in  combination  with  France,  Russia  and 
Great  Britain,  against  all  of  the  governments  at  war  with  them. 

4.  Under  the  imminent  treaty  of  peace  Italy  must  receive:  The  District 
of  Trentino ;  the  entire  Southern  Tyrol  to  her  natural  geographic 
boundary,  the  River  Brenner;  the  city  and  suburbs  of  Trieste,  Goritzia, 
and  Gradisca,  all  of  Istria  to  Quarnero,  including  Volosca,  and  the 
Istrian  islands  of  Cherso  and  Lussino,  and  also  the  smaller  islands  of 
Plavnik,  Unia,  Canidole,  Palazzuolo,  San  Pietro  dei  Nembi,  Azinelli, 
Grutzo,  together  with  the  neighboring  islands. 

5.  In  the  same  manner  Italy  is  to  receive  the  province  of  Dalmatia  in  its 
present  form,  with  the  inclusion  within  its  limits  on  the  north  of 
Lissariki  and  Trebino,  and  on  the  south  of  all  lands  to  a  line  drawn 
at  Cape  Planca  to  the  east  along  the  water-shed  in  such  a  manner  that 
in  the  Italian  domains  shall  be  included  all  the  valleys  along  the  rivers 
flowing  into  Sebiniko,  such  as  Chicolo,  Kerka,  and  Butisnitza,  with  all 
their  tributaries.  In  the  same  way  Italy  is  to  receive  all  the  islands 
located  to  the  north  and  west  of  the  shores  of  Dalmatia,  beginning 
with  the  islands  Premua,  Selva,  Ulbo,  Skerd,  Maon,  Pago,  and  Punta- 
dura,  and  further  to  the  north,  and  to  Meled  on  the  south,  with  inclusion 
therein  of  the  islands  of  St.  Andrew,  Buzzi,  Lissa,  Lessino,  Tercola, 
Curzola,  Kaisa,  and  Lagosta,  with  all  the  islands  and  bluffs  belonging 
to  them,  but  without  the  islands  of  Zirona,  Bua,  Satti  and  Brazza. 

6.  Italy  shall  receive  in  full  right  Vallona,  the  islands  of  Sasseno,  and  a 
territory  sufficiently  extensive  to  safeguard  them  in  a  military  way, 
approximately  between  the  river  Voyuss  on  the  north  and  the  east,  and 
to  the  boundaries  of  the  Schimar  district  to  the  south. 

7.  On  receiving  Trentino  and  Istria  in  accordance  with  Article  4,  of 
Dalmatia  and  the  Adriatic  Islands  in  accordance  with  Article  5,  and 
the  Bay  of  Vallona,  Italy  is  obligated  in  the  event  of  the  formation  of 
Albania  of  a  small  autonomous  neutralized  state,  not  to  oppose  the 
possible  desire  of  France,  Great  Britain  and  Russia  to  redistribute  among 
Montenegro,  Serbia  and  Greece  of  the  northern  and  southern  districts 
of  Albania.  The  southern  shore  of  Albania  from  the  boundary  of  the 
Italian  district  of  Vallona  to  the  Cape  of  Stilos  is  subject  to  neutraliza- 
tion. Italy  shall  have  the  right  to  conduct  the  foreign  relations  of 
Albania.  In  any  event  Italy  obligates  herself  to  leave  certain  territory 
sufficiently  extensive  for  Albania,  in  order  that  the  boundaries  of  the 
latter  are  contiguous  from  Lake  Ochrida,  to  the  boundaries  of  Greece 
and  Serbia. 

8.  Italy  is  to  receive  in  full  right  all  the  islands  now  occupied  by  her  at 
Dodekez. 

9.  France,  Great  Britain  and  Russia  in  principle  recognize  the  interests  of 
Italy,  in  preserving  the  political  balance  in  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  and  her 

395 


396  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

right  to  receive  on  the  division  of  Turkey  an  equal  share  with  them  in 
the  basin  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  more  specifically  in  that  part  of 
it  contiguous  to  the  province  of  Adalia,  where  Italy  has  already  obtained 
special  rights  and  has  developed  certain  interests  vouchsafed  to  her  by 
the  Italo-British  agreement.  The  zone  subject  to  transfer  to  the 
sovereignty  of  Italy  will  be  more  specifically  defined  in  due  time  and  in 
correspondence  with  the  vital  interests  of  France  and  Great  Britain. 
Likewise,  the  interests  of  Italy  must  be  taken  into  consideration,  even 
in  the  event  that  the  territorial  inviolability  of  Asiatic  Turkey  shall  be 
sustained  by  the  Powers  for  a  further  period  of  time,  and  if  only 
redistribution  of  spheres  of  influence  is  to  take  place.  Should  France, 
Great  Britain  and  Russia,  in  the  course  of  the  present  war  occupy  certain 
districts  of  Asiatic  Turkey,  the  entire  district  adjacent  to  Adalia  and 
herewith  more  specifically  defined,  shall  remain  with  Italy,  which  reserves 
for  itself  the  right  to  occupy  the  same. 

10.  In  Lybia  all  the  rights  and  privileges  which  prior  to  this  date  have  been 
acquired  by  the  Sultan  on  the  basis  of  the  Treaty  of  Lazansk  are 
recognized  as  belonging  to  Italy. 

11.  Italy  shall  receive  such  share  of  the  military  contribution  as  shall 
correspond  to  the  measure  of  sacrifice  and  effort  made  by  her. 

12.  Italy  joins  in  a  declaration  made  by  France,  England  and  Russia  as  to 
leaving  Arabia  and  sacred  Mohammedan  places  in  control  of  an  independ- 
ent Mohammedan  Power. 

13.  In  the  event  of  expansion  of  French  and  English  colonial  domains  in 
Africa  at  the  expense  of  Germany,  France  and  Great  Britain  recognize 
in  principle  the  Italian  right  to  demand  for  herself  certain  compensations 
in  the  sense  of  expansions  of  her  lands  in  Erithria,  Somaliland,  in  Lybia, 
and  colonial  districts  lying  on  the  boundary,  with  the  colonies  of  France 
and  England. 

14.  England  obligates  herself  to  assist  Italy  immediately  to  negotiate  on  the 
London  market,  on  advantageous  terms,  a  loan  in  a  sum  of  50,000,000 
pounds  sterling. 

15.  France,  England  and  Russia  obligate  themselves  to  support  Italy  in  her 
desire  for  non-admittance  of  the  Holy  See  to  any  kind  of  diplomatic 
steps  for  the  purpose  of  the  conclusion  of  peace  or  the  regulation  of 
questions  arising  from  the  present  war. 

16.  This  treaty  must  be  kept  secret.  As  to  Italy  joining  in  the  declaration 
of  September  5,  1914,  only  said  declaration  shall  be  made  public  im- 
mediately after  the  declaration  of  the  war  by  or  against  Italy,    (sic). 

Taking  into  consideration  the  present  memorandum,  the  representa- 
tives of  France,  Great  Britain,  and  Russia,  having  been  duly  empowered 
for  this  purpose,  agreed  with  the  representative  of  Italy,  who  in  his 
turn  was  duly  empowered  by  his  government,  in  the  premises  as  follows : 

France,  Great  Britain,  and  Russia  expressed  their  complete  agree- 
ment with  the  present  memorandum  presented  to  them  by  the  Italian 
government.  With  regard  to  Articles  I,  II,  and  III  of  this  memorandum 
relating  to  the  co-operation  of  the  military  and  naval  operations  of  all 
four  Powers,  Italy  declares  that  she  will  enter  actively  at  the  very 
earliest  opportunity,  and  at  all  events  not  later  than  one  month  after 
the  signing  of  the  present  document  by  the  contracting  parties.  The 
undersigned  have  set  their  hands  and  seals  at  London  in  four  copies  the 
27th  day  of  April,  1915. 

Sir  Edward  Grey, 
Cam  BON, 

Marquis  Imperiali, 
Count  Benckendorf. 

As  an  example  of  what  international  morality  should  not  be,  the  above  memoran- 
dum-treaty deserves  its  own  niche  in  the  chamber  of  horrors  of  the  Great  War. 


Censorship  Regulations  of  Bulgaria,  1915 

THE  publication  here  of  the  "Regulations  regarding  the  Military  Censorship 
and  the  Manner  of  Its  Application"  of  the  Bulgarian  government  is  not  to 
leave  it  inferred  that  I  have  selected  this  document  on  account  of  its  severe  stric- 
tures. I  publish  the  document  because  no  other  quite  as  frank  and  straightforward  in 
its  terms  has  come  into  my  hands.  Governments  do  not  generally  allow  such  manifests 
to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  public,  issuing  them  "confidentially"  for  the  guidance 
of  their  censorship  officials.  When  such  regulations  are  laid  before  editors  they  are 
generally  not  in  a  position  to  publish  them.  The  censorship  regulations  of  the 
Entente  and  Central  governments  were  in  all  particulars  the  same,  and  the  proscrip- 
tions pronounced  by  Postmaster  Burleson,  under  penalty  that  offending  newspapers 
would  be  excluded  from  the  mails,  had  the  same  purpose  in  mind.  These,  then, 
are  the  reasons  why  I  append  here  the  censorship  rules  of  the  Bulgarian  government, 
a  copy  of  which  I  secured  at  the  time  for  this  purpose : 

1.  In  times  of  war,  or  in  case  of  danger  therefrom,  a  military  censorship  is 
to  be  established.     Subject  to  this  are: 

(a)  All  printed  editions  of  newspapers,  periodicals,  separate  compositions, 
notices,  maps,  pictures,  manuscripts,  and  lithographic  productions,  ill- 
ustrated cards,  moving  picture  films,  photographic  productions  of  all 
kinds. 

(b)  All  private  telegraphic  and  letter  correspondence. 

2.  The  introduction  of  the  Military  Censorship,  as  well  as  its  removal,  is 
announced  by  Royal  Edict,  in  accordance  with  the  order  of  the  Minis- 
terial Council.  During  the  term  of  the  Military  Censorship,  all  writers, 
editors,  printers,  sellers  and  distributors  of  newspapers,  periodicals, 
separate  compositions,  notices,  maps,  pictures  and  all  sort  of  printed 
matter  must  adhere  to  the  following  rules : 

(a)  Such  reports  only  shall  be  sent  out  on  the  military  operations  as  are 
issued  officially  by  the  chief  of  staff. 

(b)  It  is  not  permitted  to  distort  the  reports  officially  given  out  by  the 
general  headquarters  or  to  write  articles  and  pamphlets  whereby  a 
negative  influence  can  be  exerted  upon  the  spirit  of  the  army  and 
the  nation. 

(c)  It  is  not  permitted  to  publish  reports  relating  to  the  mobilization  move- 
ments or  transportation  of  troops  on  the  railways,  or  to  write  and 
publish  information  regarding  the  organization,  armament,  clothing, 
numerical  strength,  rationing,  sanitation  of  the  troops  and  different  ap- 
pointments  in  the  army. 

(d)  It  is  not  permitted  to  report  the  arrival  of  military  materials,  or  to 
announce  the  orders  given  and  purchases  effected  in  foreign  countries. 

(e)  It  is  not  permitted  to  give  information  regarding  the  numerical  strength 
or  the  composition  of  the  army,  its  sub-divisions  and  detachments. 

(f)  It  is  forbidden  to  publish  information  regarding  the  number  of  killed 
and  wounded,  as  well  as  the  names  of  the  killed  and  wounded,  if  there 
is   no   official   permission   therefor. 

(g)  It  is  not  permitted  to  criticize  the  operations  of  the  commanders  or 
the  troops,  as  well  as  everything  whereby  the  prestige  of  the  commanders 
and  the  army  is  affected. 

(h)  No  articles  and  pamphlets  are  permitted  which  demand  the  stopping 
of  the  war  or  indulge  in  commentaries  upon  the  benefits  and  injuries 
therefrom. 

(i)    It  is  not  permitted  to  print  pictures  of  any  kind  of  portraits  or  draw- 

397 


398  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

ings,  having  for  their  purpose  the  caricaturing  of  the  troops  and  their 

commanders, 
(j)   It  is  not  permitted  to  report  anything  upon  defeats  and  retreats  of  our 

troops,  the  loss  of  positions,  fortifications,  colors,  guns,  etc.,  if  such 

information  is  not  issued  officially, 
(k)  It  is  not  permitted  to  report  any  catastrophe  in  the  rear  of  the  army 

or  in  the  interior  of  the  state,  as,  for  instance,  railroad  accidents,  great 

fires,  the  explosion  of  military  arsenals,  etc. 
(1  )  It  is  not  permitted  to  report  the  appearance  in  the  army  of  epidemic 

diseases,  or  if  they  occur  in  the  country, 
(m)  It  is  not  permitted  to  report  imminent,  planned,  or  effected  revolts 

and  disorders,  whether  in  the  rear  of  the  army  or  in  the  interior  of 

the  country, 
(n)  It  is  not  permitted  to  print  appeals  and  invitations  for  meetings,  which 

are  opposed  to  the  authorities  or  the  army,  or  which  may  demand  the 

cessation  of  the  war. 
(o)  It  is  not  permitted  to  bring  in  from  abroad  and  to  distribute  news- 
papers, pictures,  and  other  printed  or  lithographed  productions,  which 

are  likely  to  exert  a  negative  influence  upon  the  spirit  of  the  army  and 

the  nation,  or  insult  the  authorities. 

4.  Those  found  guilty  of  violating  the  above  regulations  will  be  punished 
in  accordance  with  the  Law  of  Treason  and  Spying,  while  such  matter 
as  was  used  in  the  commission  of  the  offense  will  be  confiscated  and 
destroyed. 

5.  The  activity  in  respect  to  the  application  of  the  Rules  reg^arding 
Military  Censorship  is  concentrated  in  the  Censorship  Section  of  the 
Staff  of  the  Army  of  Operations. 

6.  The  appointment  of  the  Censorship  Section  in  times  of  war  is: 

(a)  To  trace  everything  which  is  being  written  in  the  Bulgarian  and 
foreign  press  upon  the  organization  of  the  Bulgarian  army  as  well 
as  upon  that  of  the  enemy  and  upon  their  respective  operations. 

(b)  To  subject  to  the  censorship  all  telegrams  and  other  communications 
of  the  war  correspondents  and  military  attaches  who  may  be  admitted 
to  the  theater  of  war,  or  be  sojourning  within  the  country. 

(c)  To  trace  the  conduct  of  the  war  correspondents  and  military  attaches 
and  to  take  the  necessary  steps  for  the  elimination  of  illegal  and  disloyal 
relationship  of  the  same  in  regard  to  the  transmission  of  their  cor- 
respondence from  the  theater  of  war  to  foreign  countries. 

(d)  To  take  all  needed  measures  for  the  control  of  letters  and  other 
communications,  which  soldiers,  officers,  and  military  officials  at  the 
front  may  address  to  foreign  countries. 

(e)  To  take  the  necessary  measures  for  tracing  all  private  correspondence 
in  the  theater  of  war  destined  for  a  foreign  country. 

7.  The  Censorship  Division  in  times  of  mobilization  is  divided  into  two 
sections  :  The  first  section  follows  the  staff  of  the  Army  of  Operations ; 
the  second  section  remains  in  Sofia. 

8.  On  the  First  Section  devolve  the  following  functions : 

(a)  Accompanying  the  military  correspondents  to  the  theater  of  operations. 

(b)  Subjecting  to  censorship  all  telegrams  and  letters  from  the  theater  of 
war  to  foreign  countries  or  for  the  interior  of  Bulgaria, 

(c)  To  conduct  censorship  in  the  theater  of  war  itself. 

(d)  The  general  management  of  censorship  within  the  country  and  occupied 
territories. 

9.  On  the  Second  Section  devolve  the  following  duties: 

(a)  Accompanying  all  correspondents  who  have  remained  in  the  capital 
and  Bulgaria. 


CENSORSHIP  REGULATIONS  OF  BULGARIA,  1915       399 

(b)  Censoring  all  telegrams  and  letters  sent  from  the  non-war  zones  of  the 
country  to  foreign  countries. 

(c)  Censoring  all  printed  and  lithographic  productions,  newspapers,  periodi- 
cals, etc.,  which  may  appear  within  the  country. 

(d)  The  functions  imposed  by  the  Censorship  Section  at  the  General  Head- 
quarters of  the  army. 

iO.  To  secure  closer  control  over  the  telegrams  sent  abroad,  as  well  as 

over  letter  mail,  censorship  committees  are  organized  within  the  king- 
dom in  the  larger  centers  and  at  points  where  these  originate  or  pass 
in  transit.  The  committees  are  charged  with  the  survey  of  the  press 
and  all  printed  matter  agreeable  to  the  foregoing  regulations. 

11.  In  order  to  effect  efficient  censoring  all  printed  productions  must  be 
presented  by  the  editorial  departments  in  proof  form,  in  duplicate,  of 
which  one  copy  after  passing  the  censors  will  be  confirmed  by  the  seal 
of  the  censor  and  returned  to  the  submitter,  while  the  other,  cor- 
respondingly corrected,  if  necessary,  and  attested  by  the  same  seal  shall 
remain  in  the  Censorship  Section.  The  same  applies  to  all  lithographic 
productions. 

12.  Telegrams  submitted  from  the  theater  of  war,  by  war  correspondents  or 
others,  and  intended  for  foreign  countries,  or  the  interior,  are  subject 
to  censoring  in  either  sections  of  the  Censorship  division.  Such  tele- 
grams must  be  signed  by  the  corresponding  chief  of  the  Censorship 
Division  and  must  bear  the  seal  of  the  General  Staff.  No  telegraph  or 
postal  station  within  the  kingdom,  in  occupied  territories  or  in  the 
theater  of  war  may  accept  and  transmit  communications  not  showing 
this  signature  and  seal. 

13.  (Deals  with  the  censoring  of  the  letters  and  telegrams  of  officers, 
soldiers  and  persons  connected  with  the  military  service.) 

14.  (Deals  with  the  letters  and  telegrams  of  the  population.) 

15.  Correspondence  destined  for  foreign  countries  or  the  theater  of  opera- 
tions should  consist  of  postal  cards  and  letters  in  open  envelopes. 
Letters  in  sealed  envelopes  will  not  be  examined  and  will  be  destroyed. 
Telegrams  for  foreign  countries  may  be  sent  only  by  persons  who  have 
secured  a  special  permit  therefor.  Correspondence  with  persons  in 
enemy  countries  is  prohibited. 

16.  (Deals  with  the  censoring  of  letters,  telegrams  and  newspapers  from 
foreign  countries  addressed  to  officers  in  the  Bulgarian  army,  as  does 
paragraph 

17  which  says  by  whom  the  mail  of  soldiers  is  to  be  examined.) 

18.  (Designates  the  officials  in  charge  of  censoring  civilian  mails  and 
telegrams  within  the  country.) 

19.  The  telegraph  or  postal  official  who  has  accepted  or  delivered  a  tele- 
gram or  letter  not  duly  examined,  signed  and  attested  by  seal  is 
liable  to  condemnation  for  Treason  and  Espionage,  Chapter  II  and 
Article  163  of  Chapter  VI  of  the  Penal  Laws.  An  officer  or  ftmctionary, 
who,  owing  to  negligence,  permits  a  letter,  telegram  or  printed  produc- 
tion to  pass  without  sufficient  censoring  is  subject  to  severe  punish- 
ment; if  such  negligence  have  injurious  consequences  for  the  army  or 
the  military  operations,  the  guilty  person  is  liable  to  criminal  prosecu- 
tion. 

The  Minister  of  War, 

Major-General  Jekoff. 


Societe  Anonyme  et  S.  E.  le  Cardinal  Mercier 

The  Joint  Case  of  an  Ecclesiastical  and  a  Journalistic  Diplomatist 
(Part  of  an  address  delivered  by  the  author  at  the  Hotel  Astor,  New  York  City, 

on  March  8th,  1920.) 

**T  SUPPOSE  some  of  you  can  recall  that  the  life  of  Cardinal  Mercier,  primate  of 
X  Belgium,  was  saved  in  a  very  peculiar  manner.    The  story  first  made  the  rounds 

of  the  world's  press  in  January  and  February  of  1915,  was  revived  now  and  then 
as  the  war  went  on,  was  heard  from  a  thousand  pulpits  and  platforms,  in  millions  of 
newspaper  editions  and  when  the  four-minute  men  in  this  country  and  elsewhere 
wanted  to  lash  the  Roman  Catholics  into  high  fury,  the  sad,  sad  tale  concerning 
Cardinal  Mercier  was  retailed. 

"Well,  in  all  the  versions  you  may  have  heard  of  it,  there  was  an  unknown  hero. 
Who  had  saved  the  cardinal's  life?  Who  had  warned  the  Germans  not  to  shoot  him 
out  of  hand?  Who  had  later  secured  his  release  from  prison?  Who  had  made  it 
possible  for  the  prince  of  the  church  to  go  out  once  a  day?  Who  had  done  these 
and  other  things?  Why,  the  same  person  who  had  first  given  the  world  a  picture  of 
the  terrible  suffering  of  the  civilian  population  in  Belgium?  Did  it  not  seem  strange 
to  you  that  the  name  of  the  person  was  never  known? 

"However,  on  September  3rd,  of  last  year,  the  world  was  finally  taken  into  the 
confidence  of  those  who  knew  who  this  mysterious  hero — this  lady  bountiful  and 
lifesaver  was,  to  wit:     The  Associated  Press  of  America. 

"I  will  read  to  you  a  dispatch  which  the  Associated  Press  caused  to  be  dis- 
seminated on  September  3rd  of  last  year. 

"  'Paris,  Sept.  2. — Cardinal  Mercier,  Primate  of  Belgium,  left  Paris  this 
morning  for  Brest,  whence  he  will  sail  for  the  United  States. 

"  'Cardinal  Mercier  told  the  Associated  Press  that  he  was  visiting 
America  because,  having  been  in  contact  with  the  great  work  of  the  Ameri- 
cans for  relief  of  the  Belgians  during  the  great  war,  he  wanted  to  thank 
them  on  their  own  soil,  and  because  he  was  glad  to  accept  invitations  from 
virtually  all  the  universities  of  America. 

"  The  cardinal  added  that  the  name  of  the  Associated  Press  recalled  to 
him  one  of  the  dramatic  incidents  of  his  experiences  during  the  war.  The 
Germans  had  threatened  to  arrest  him  and  policemen  were  even  at  the  door 
ready  to  take  him  into  custody  when  the  German  commander  intercepted  a 
dispatch  from  the  Associated  Press  to  the  cardinal,  asking  him  if  the 
Germans  were  arresting  him  on  account  of  his  public  utterances. 

"  'That  telegram,'  said  Cardinal  Mercier,  'made  the  commander  hesitate 
long  enough  for  Berlin  to  reflect  and  think  better  of  it.' 

"It  seems  that  the  New  York  office  of  the  Associated  Press  was  not  yet 
satisfied  with  the  heroic  color  of  this  dispatch,  and  so  it  added  the  following: 

"  'Following  the  ruthless  invasion  of  Belgium  by  the  Germans,  Cardinal 
Mercier  at  the  close  of  the  year  of  1914  issued  his  famous  Christmas  pastoral, 
in  which  he  said  Belgium  was  bound  in  honor  to  defend  her  independence. 
She  had  kept  her  word,  he  said.  Germany  had  broken  her  oath.  Great 
Britain  had  been  faithful  to  hers.  Toward  the  invaders  the  Belgians  owed 
no  obedience. 

"  'On  the  appearance  of  this  pastoral  the  German  military  authorities 
took  great  offense  and  practically  placed  the*  Cardinal  in  durance  at  his  palace 
at  Malines.  An  effort  was  made  to  obtain  a  statement  from  him  for  the 
Associated  Press  and  the  message  was  transmitted  to  an  Associated  Press 
correspondent  in  Belgium.    In  response  the  following  message  was  received : 

400 


SOCIBTB  ANONYMB  BT  S.  B.  LB  CARDINAL  MBRCIBR  401 

"  '  "January  10,  1915. 
"  *  "Von   Bissing  wires  has   delivered  to   Cardinal   Mercier  Associated 
Press  request  for  statement.    Am  pressing  for  reply." 
"  *No  further  response  was  received.' 

"So  much  for  the  heroic  concoction  that  appeared  in  the  papers  of  September 
3rd  and  4th,  of  last  year.  Just  think  of  it:  Here  is  the  Associated  Press,  a  cor- 
poration chartered  under  the  laws  of  the  State  of  New  York,  along  co-operative 
lines,  for  the  purpose  of  gathering  and  distributing  news,  engaging  as  a  sort  of  side 
line  in  saving  cardinals  and  other  chance  persons  from  dire  fates.  But  so  far  you 
know  but  half  the  story. 

"You  know  that  the  Associated  Press  as  a  corporation  has  saved  the  cardinal 
from  a  horrible  fate.     How  did  it  come  about? 

"There  appeared  in  the  TYD,  a  Dutch  Catholic  clerical  paper  that  was  extremely 
anti-German  from  the  very  start  of  the  war,  a  long  and  circumstantial  story,  on 
January  Sth,  that  Cardinal  Mercier,  the  primate  of  Belgium,  was  in  sore  trouble 
because  he  had  caused  to  be  published,  and  had  otherwise  disseminated,  a  Christmas 
pastoral  to  this  flock.  The  innuendoes  were  many,  and  since  the  Associated  Press 
had  to  be  protected  the  The  Hague  correspondent  of  the  service  wired  what  seemed 
to  be  the  essentials  of  the  story,  with  due  credit  and  caution.  That  story  was  the 
first  intimation  the  United  States  public  had  that  something  was  happening  in  Malines. 

"The  story  of  the  Associated  Press  was  hardly  off  the  press  in  the  United  States 
when  every  London  and  Paris  journalist  cut-throat  was  at  it  painting  the  heavens 
red  with  the  blood  of  the  primate  of  Belgium.  It  seems  that  the  Associated  Press 
correspondent  at  The  Hague  woud  not  grow  excited  enough  for  the  men  in  New 
York,  and  so  it  came  that  the  general  manager  of  the  Associated  Press  instructed 
him  by  cable  just  what  he  would  have  to  do  in  order  to  develop  this  story.  The 
correspondent  knew  by  then  that  the  cardinal  was  in  no  danger  whatever  and  had 
wired  a  story  to  that  effect,  which  the  British  censors  suppressed.  To  put  an  end 
to  the  demand  for  more  copy  on  the  subject  he  forwarded  to  Cardinal  Mercier, 
through  General  Von  Bissing,  and  the  military  headquarters,  the  Platzkommando,  at 
Aix-la-Chapelle,  a  dispatch  which  makes  its  appearance  among  the  cardinal's  official 
correspondence,  recently  published  here  and  abroad,  as  follows : 

"  'Office  of  the  Kreischef  of   Malines,  January  9th,   1915. 
"'The  Cardinal  Archbishop  of  Malines. 

"  'By  order  of  the  Governor  General  I  have  the  honor  to  forward  to  your 
Eminence   the    following   telegram   which    was    received   by   the   Governor 
General  with  the  request  to  communicate  it  to  you. 
"  '  "To  his  Eminence  Cardinal  Mercier : 

"  '  "It  has  been  rumored  that  your  Eminence  has  been  arrested,  together 
with  certain  other  persons  who  have  co-operated  in  the  dissemination  of 
the  pastoral  letter.  This  report  has  produced  a  deep  impression  throughout 
America.  For  this  reason  I  have  been  charged  by  the  managers  of  the 
Associated  Press  to  get  into  personal  communication  with  your  Eminence 
and  to  receive  from  you  details  of  the  alleged  bad  treatment  to  which  you 
have  been  subjected.  If  your  Eminence  be  agreeable,  I  beg  you  to  inform 
me  at  the  American  Legation  at  The  Hague  what  can  be  published  of  your 
present  position. 

"  '  "With  kindest  regards, 

(Signed)   '  "George  A.  Schreiner 
"  '  "Correspondent  of  the  Associated  Press." 
"  'In  case  your  Eminence  deems  it  expedient  to  reply  to  this  telegram,  I 
place  myself  at  your  disposal  to  transmit  your  reply. 

'"The  Kreischef 
(Signed)  "  'G.  von  Wengersky, 

"  'Colonel.' 
"The  corrections  which  I  will  make  at  this  point,  on  behalf  of  truth,  are  the 
following  : 

"Cardinal  Mercier  was  not  in  detention  and  policemen  were  not  waiting  to  take 
him  into  custody,  as  the  Associated  Press  would  have  it,  in  order  to  seem  greater 
than  it  actually  is.     In  fact  the  only  thing  that  had  been  done  to  the  cardinal  was 


402  THE  CRAI^T  SINISTER 

that  he  had  been  refused  permission  to  go  to  Antwerp  to  preach  to  a  congregation 
there.  That  was  the  sum  total  of  the  durance  in  which  the  Associated  Press,  for 
purposes  of  its  own,  as  late  as  September  3rd,  last,  places  the  cardinal. 

"And  there  was  nothing  dramatic  about  the  entire  incident.  Nor  did  the 
Governor  of  Belgium  intercept  my  dispatch,  as  is  stated  in  the  recent  tale  from 
Paris.  Nothing  of  the  sort  is  true.  I  addressed  my  telegram  for  the  cardinal  to 
General  von  Bissing  direct,  and  did  that  through  the  military  authorities  of  the 
Germans  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  to  make  sure  that  the  telegram  got  to  the  addressee. 
So  it  came  about  that  the  Governor  General  of  Belgium,  General  von  Bissing,  ac- 
cording to  the  admission  contained  in  Cardinal  Mercier's  official  correspondence, 
charged  the  Kreischef  of  Malines  to  transmit  through  his  office  to  Cardinal  Mercier 
my  telegram. 

"Somebody  was  careless  with  the  truth  in  this  instance.  I  take  it  for  granted 
that  the  cardinal-archbishop  of  Malines,  the  primate  of  all  Belgium,  would  not  do 
that  and  still  the  Associated  Press  report  implies  that  he  did  do  such  a  thing.  Who 
is  right  here,  and  who  wrong?  On  the  other  hand,  the  Associated  Press  claims  for 
itself  so  high  a  degree  for  accuracy  that,  taking  this  claim  for  what  it  seems  worth, 
it  is  hard  to  believe  that  the  Associated  Press  made  a  mistake.  In  fact,  I  know  that 
the  Associated  Press  is  infallible. 

"The  Cardinal  further  is  quoted  as  saying: 

"  That  telegram  made  the  commander  hesitate  long  enough  for  Berlin  to 
reflect  and  think  better  of  it.' 

"To  which  I  will  take  the  liberty  of  saying:  Piffle!  The  prince  of  the  church 
knows  as  well  as  I  do  that  the  German  official  dementi,  relayed  by  me  on  January  7th, 
at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  to  be  exact,  contained  every  word  needed  to  describe 
the  situation  in  Malines,  and  that  was  two  days  before  I  got  in  touch  with  the 
cardinal  in  the  manner  described.  Again  I  hope,  that  it  was  not  the  cardinal-arch- 
bishop who  trifled  with  the  truth.  That  His  Eminence  was  among  the  foremost  of 
ecclesiastical  diplomatists  I  know,  but  I  would  hate  to  think  that  he  would  be  so 
crude  in  his  methods  as  here  indicated. 

"Now  then,  let  us  see  what  the  cardinal  himself  said  in  his  dispatch  that  was 
to  reply  to  mine,  a  dispatch  which  never  reached  me,  but  which  I  find  in  the  cardinal's 
collection  of  official  documents: 

"  'Cardinal  Mercier  presents  to  the  Count  Wengerski  the  expression  of 
his  high  esteem  and  begs  him  to  be  good  enough  to  forward  the  enclosed 
answer  to  the  correspondent  of  the  Associated  Press  of  America. 

"  'George  Schreiner, 

"  'Correspondent  of  the  Associated  Press  of  America, 

"  'American  Legation,  The  Hague. 

"  'In  reply  to  your  telegram  I  regret  to  have  to  declare  that  a  number  of 
priests  have  had  to  submit  to  the  violations  of  their  homes,  threats  of  fines 
and  imprisonment  and  arrest.  The  printer  of  the  pastoral  letter  was  con- 
demned to  a  fine  of  500  marks.  Myself  received  January  2nd,  six  o'clock 
morning,  three  officers  who  brought  me  an  order  to  remain  at  the  disposal 
of  Governor  General ;  Sunday,  January  3rd,  received  by  telegram  Governor 
General's  prohibition  to  go  to  Antwerp  to  preside  at  religious  ceremony. 

"Shall  be  obliged  to  you  for  acknowledging  receipt  of  my  wire. 

(Signed)   "'Cardinal  Mercier, 

"'Archbishop  of  Malines.' 

"Cardinal  Mercier  tells  us  that  the  Governor-General  of  Belgium  refused  to 
have  this  telegram  reach  me,  and  that  he,  the  cardinal,  then  sent  me  the  following : 

"  'George  A.  Schreiner,  etc. 

"  'I  quite  understand  the  sympathy  you  wish  to  manifest  toward  me  and 
I  thank  you  for  it ;  but  I  prefer  for  the  present  not  to  dwell  on  the  vexatious 
proceedings  to  which  you  refer  and  to  continue  to  confine  myself  to  my 
duties  as  a  bishop. 

"  'I  repeat,  however,  that  I  have  withdrawn  and  shall  withdraw  nothing 
of  my  pastoral  letter. 

(Signed)   "'Cardinal  Mercier, 

"'Archbishop  of  Malines.' 


SOCIBTB  ANONYMB  S.  B.  LB  CARDINAL  MBRCIBR     403 

"May  I  not  draw  attention  to  the  highly  diplomatic  character  of  this  second 
dispatch  of  the  cardinal's.  My  telegram  to  him  had  portrayed  no  sympathy  in  the 
least  degree,  since  I  had  carefully  confined  myself  to  the  matter-of-fact  aspect  of  the 
thing.  In  fact,  I  had  no  reason  at  all  to  feel  any  special  brand  or  degree  of  sympathy 
for  His  Eminence,  knowing  very  well  that  the  cock-and-bull  stories  concerning  his 
sad  fate  were  untrue.  Again,  we  newspapermen  are  not  generally  given  to  maudliness 
of  any  sort,  and  I  am  sure  that  not  one  of  the  journalists  who  wept  over  His 
Eminence  at  so  much  per  line  or  column  cared  a  rap  whether  or  no  his  freedom  had 
in  any  way  been  curtailed  by  von  Bissing.  When  war  is  rampant  it  is  best  not  to 
be  too  particular  in  your  expectations. 

"But  to  come  back  to  the  Associated  Press  for  a  brief  moment.  This  corporation 
says  that  it  saved  the  cardinal  from  all  sorts  of  dire  things,  and  for  the  purpose 
of  getting  what  credit  there  can  be  in  this  for  a  chartered  company  it  fails  to 
mention  the  name  of  its  correspondent,  which  correspondent  later,  that  is  now,  dis- 
claims all  credit  as  a  lifesaver,  and  announces  that  there  was  no  occasion  whatsoever 
for  heroics,  the  whole  bussiness  being  just  a  plain  incident  to  war  and  news -gathering, 
and  nothing  more. 

"I  would  go  on  record  to  the  effect  that  His  Eminence  owes  me  no  thanks 
whatsoever,  and,  owing  me  no  thanks,  owes  none  to  the  Associated  Press.  The  fact 
is  that  the  entire  business  is  an  accident — an  accident  based  on  the  frightfully  exag- 
gerated reports  published  in  the  Amsterdam  TYD,  which  I  peddled,  entirely  because 
I  did  not  want  another  correspondent  to  scoop  me,  as  the  saying  goes,  though  know- 
ing full  well  at  the  time,  that  the  thing  could  not  be  what  it  was  said  to  be,  an 
opinion  shared  with  me  by  most  of  the  responsible  journalists  in  Holland  who 
ignored  the  story.  If  there  is  going  to  be  a  general  issuing  of  decorations  on  account 
of  the  Cardinal  Mercier  story,  by  all  means  let  such  medals  go  to  the  editor  of  the 
TYD,  one  of  the  bravest  mental  contortionists  of  the  Great  War,  which  is  saying  a 
great  deal,  considering  the  Ochses,  Pulitzers,  Noyeses  and  Stones." 


I 


N 


*The  Pitfalls  of  Diplomacy" 

(Excerpts  from  an  Address  made  by  the  Author  at  the  Hotel  Astor,  New  York, 

March  8th,  1920.) 

MEET  a  good  many  people  who  regret  that  things  are  not  different  as  the  result 

of  this  war.    Everybody,  it  seems,  thought  there  would  be  a  new  era  when  the 

gentlemen  of  the  Paris  Conference  were  through  idealising  and  democratising. 
There  was  to  be  this  and  that.  This  world  was  to  be  such  a  happy  place  to  live 
in — really.  Well,  look  at  it.  If  ever  a  crowd  of  politicians  made  a  poor  job  of  a  thing 
this  is  it.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  we  have  nothing  today  but  debts ;  to  the  sum  total 
of  things  upon  which  the  happiness  of  mankind  depends  we  have  added  nothing,  on 
the  contrary  we  have  wasted  our  substance  in  the  most  prodigal  manner. 

"Nothing  at  all  is  to  be  gained  by  looking  upon  the  results  of  war  from  the 
angle  of  regret.  It  is  futile  to  do  that.  The  end  of  all  wars  is  similar  to  but  one 
thing — that  which  the  French  call :  une  omelette.  I  might  have  said :  Scrambled  eggs. 
But  French  has  been  so  very  popular  recently,  vous  saves,  though  most  of  you  do 
not  know  it.  Look  at  our  beautiful  perfume-ad  English,  for  instance.  I  do  love  the 
idiot  who  has  to  mix  two  or  more  languages  to  make  himself  understood.  But  that 
is  no  reason  why  Sauerkraut  should  not  continue  to  be  known  as  Liberty  Cabbage. 
Why  not?  The  conception  of  liberty  of  some  people  is  indeed  that  of  a  cabbage, 
with  the  difference  that  the  cabbage  does  much  better,  so  long  as  it  stands  out  on 
the  field  in  the  sun  and  rain  and  wind  and  does  so  splendidly  as  a  good  cabbage  will 
do  with  the  least  encouragement.     . 

"I  said :  une  omelette  also,  because  French  is  the  language  of  the  peculiar  business 
I  am  to  speak  of  tonight.  Now  why  is  French  the  diplomatic  language?  The  fact 
is  that  diplomatists  could  never  trust  one  another.  A  document  drawn  up  in  one 
language  today  and  translated  into  another  tomorrow  by  a  diplomatist  always  does 
have  a  different  meaning  than  what  it  had  to  one  of  the  parties  signatory  to  it. 
No  doubt,  there  had  been  a  meeting  of  minds  when  the  thing  decided  upon  was 
placed  on  record,  but  since  then  conditions  have  changed  and  to  meet  that  change  the 
terms  of  the  document,  be  it  a  treaty  or  anything  else,  are  interpreted  to  suit  one's 
own  interest.  To  end  that  practice  it  was  decided  to  draw  up  such  papers  in 
French.     . 

"Well,  even  with  that  precaution  it  is  not  always  possible  to  get  a  fair  deal.  In 
diplomacy,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  it  is  not  the  original  intent  and  purpose  that  counts, 
but  the  thing  you  want,  or  want  to  do,  at  your  convenience  or  when  the  question 
comes  up.  Let  me  remaind  you  that  in  diplomacy  there  is  no  such  thing  as  honesty. 
In  diplomacy  you  can  find  no  such  thing  as  truth.  On  the  other  hand,  diplomacy 
.  hardly  ever  lies  entirely.  I  mean  that  the  diplomatic  lie  is  usually  five  per  cent  truth. 
\  The  diplomatic  truth,  on  the  other  hand,  is  generally  ninty-five  per  cent  lies.  Diplo- 
macy is  invertebrate  and  polite.  It  is  a  Latin  art,  and  Machiavel  is  one  of  its  fathers, 
though  that  could  be  taken  as  being  a  slander  upon  Machiavel  when  we  look  at  the 
Wilsonian  brand. 

"I  passed  the  official  ash-can  of  the  Paris  Peace  Conference  the  other  day,  and 
found  in  it  the  version  of  a  very  old  creed.  I  think  it  was  King  Nebuchadnezzar  of 
Babylon — he  who  made  a  lawnmower  of  his  august  person — who  first  proclaimed  the 
principle  of  the  Fourteen  Points  and  then  failed  to  live  up  to  it.  But  I  am  sure 
that  even  he  is  merely  the  first  on  record  in  that  respect.  These  things  have  all 
been  done  before,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  though  in  a  country  like  ours,  in  which  they 
discover  the  obvious  every  day,  that  may  not  seem  apparent.  There  is  really  nothing 
•  new  under  the  sun,  and,  as  Koheleth  expressed  it:  Neither  is  there  anything  true 
under  the  sun. 

"I  was  struck  by  the  message  contained  in  the  first  of  the  Fourteen  Points : 
Open  covenants,  openly  arrived  at.  How  wonderful !  How  very  touching !  Open 
covenants  1    What  a  beautiful  sound  that  word  has.    It  is  so  Cromwellian,  don't  you 

404 


"THE  PITFALLS  OF  DIPLOMACY"  405 

know  I  Just  think  of  it — open  covenants.  How  sublime,  supreme,  superlative,  superb. 
How  similar  to  the  French  pomade  advertisements ! 

"What  I  have  to  say  here  tonight  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  first  of  the 
Fourteen  Points.  There  were  to  be  open  covenants,  openly  arrived  at.  Well,  if  there 
is  one  thing  this  world  really  needs,  it  is  open  diplomacy — if  that  is  what  Mr. 
Wilson  meant.  Had  there  been  open  diplomacy,  or  better  yet,  no  diplomacy  at  all, 
the  Great  War  would  have  been  avoided,  and  mankind  spared  one  of  the  worst 
trials  it  ever  went  through.  I  am  sure  that  Mr.  Wilson  felt  that.  .  .  .  I  at 
least  prefer  to  look  upon  that  aspect  of  the  Great  War  from  that  angle,  for  not  to 
do  that  obliges  us  to  think  of  the  famous  Fourteen  Points  as  the  most  colossal,  most 
monumental,  most  Machiavellian  frauds  of  all  history. 

"But  there  is  nothing  to  be  regretted  when  war  is  over.  The  eggs  have  been 
broken  and  the  milk  has  been  spilled.  The  plaint  that  this  or  that  injustice  was 
done  is  like  the  cackling  of  the  hen  that  sees  her  eggs  broken  on  the  rim  of  the 
skillet  by  a  cook  who  is  not  interested  at  all  in  the  primary  purpose  of  the  egg  in 
nature,  but  wants  just  an  omelet.  When  you  want  an  omelet  you  must  break  eggs. 
In  Paris  they  broke  their  promises  together  with  the  eggs,  which  is  nothing  unusual 
W    since  Paris  is  the  home  of  the  proverb:     To  make  colonies  one  must  break  heads. 

"There  was  held  out  to  us  the  hope  that  self-determination  was  to  wipe  out  all 
of  the  irredentas  in  Europe.  That  alone  would  have  been  worth  the  price  paid  for 
the  great  adventure.  The  author  of  the  Fourteen  Points  was  very  emphatic  on  that 
particular  point.  Well,  what  happened?  The  Big  Four  applied  instead  the  fine 
principle  of  imperialistic  Rome :  Divide  et  impera,  which  now  reads :  Enslave  by 
division.  ?^««iW^ 

"Of  course,  there  were  to  be  no  more  subject  peoples.  They  all  were  to  be 
free.  Well,  in  some  parts  that  was  carried  out — at  the  expense  of  enemy  states:  But 
we  are  still  looking  for  self-determination  for  the  several  groups  of  mankind, 
large  and  small,  high  and  low,  that  make  up  the  British  and  French  empires.  I  am 
not  going  to  give  you  a  list  of  them  here.  It  is  hardly  necessary.  Nor  do  I  advise 
self-determination  as  a  cure-all,  as  does  the  diplomatist  with  an  axe  to  grind.  Con- 
trary to  what  has  been  said,  the  Balance  of  Power  is  the  only  feasible  means  of 
sane  international  relations,  and  into  that  scheme  the  small  state  does  not  fit  very 
well.  The  World  Power  unchecked  by  opposition  has  a  most  ungodly  appetite.  Its 
government  and  people  will  gobble  up  one  small  state  after  another.  To  prevent  that 
small  peoples  are  obliged  to  combine  into  large  states.  It  is  unfortunate  that  they 
cannot  do  that  without  acquiring  afterwards  themselves  all  the  vices  of  the  mam- 
moth against  whom  they  combined.  But  that  is  one  of  the  things  that  show  how 
far  off  the  millennium  really  is.     .     .     . 

"But  right  now  we  are  looking  at  these  things  in  the  light  of  the  most  recent 
pronunciamentos.  There  was  to  be  happiness  ever  afterwards.  The  peoples  of  this 
earth  were  to  dwell  under  their  own  figtrees.  I  can  still  see  the  Pharisees  standing 
about  with  eyes  upcast  to  heaven  while  giving  mankind  these  assurances.  It  is 
to  laugh — pardon  me:  Cest  a  rire! 

"The  easiest  way  of  running  the  affairs  of  this  world  and  getting  the  cream  of 
its  labor  is  to  keep  mankind  divided  in  small  groups  and  then  set  these  groups  at 
one  another's  throats.  While  the  small  fellows  are  so  engaged,  you,  quite  naturally, 
step  in  and  help  yourself.     .     .     . 

"But  these  are  things  which  this  world  does  not  care  to  look  at.  I  have 
had,  recently,  many  an  occasion  to  remind  people  of  the  killing  off,  by  the  late 
lamented  Lord  Kitchener,  the  butcher  of  Omdurman  and  Khartoum,  in  his  con- 
centration camps  of  over  26,000  Boer  women  and  children.  That  was  about  the 
eleventh  part  of  the  Boer  population  of  the  South  African  Republic  and  Orange 
I'ree  State.  When  I  mention  that  little  matter  I  usually  get  nothing  more  than  a 
bland  smile,  back  of  which  I  can  read  the  exclamation :  What  a  liar  that  man  is ! 
Mankind  has  ever  found  it  hard  to  believe  the  thing  which  is  not  in  accord  with 
^  its  hopes  and  desires.  In  fact,  most  people  will  believe  only  which  serves  some 
\purpose  of  theirs,  and  with  that  class  all  things  beyond  this  very  limited  sphere 
are  simply  denied.  One  of  the  greatest  adherents  of  the  ostrich  philosophy  is  the 
American  public. 


406  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

"We  hear  now  and  then  of  the  thing  called  justice.  And  there  are  not  a  few 
who  hoped  that  justice  would  come  of  this  war.  Such  simplemindedness  is  pathetic 
and  a  waste  of  other  people's  time.  When  a  government  goes  to  war  it  does  so 
for  the  purpose  of  getting  something  by  main  force  which  by  another  method  it 
could  not  get.  The  other  government  then  goes  to  war  to  prevent  the  robbery,  for 
such  the  high  motive  shows  itself  to  be,  when  the  fine  verbal  draperies  are  pulled 
aside.  There  may  have  been  a  war  that  was  started  to  get  justice,  but  I  have 
no  knowledge  of  it,  and  when  I  say  started  I  do  not  mean  the  firing  of  the  first 
shot  or  the  sending  of  the  ultimatum,  but  the  long  list  of  diplomatic  malfeasances 
that  go  before  and  smile  at  us  later  as  the  alleged  causes  of  the  war,  when  in  reality 
they  are  nothing  but  its  pretexts. 

"The  aggressor  in  a  war  has  never  laid  bare  his  actual  motives.  What  he 
places  before  the  neutral  public,  and  his  own  people,  is  never  more  than  the  pretext. 
Some  lofty  principle  in  his  reasons,  we  are  told,  and  generally  that  lofty  principle 
is  one  which  will  benefit  all  mankind — will  save  civilization,  progress  and  what  not. 
So  we  are  told,  and  so  most  of  us  believe.    .    .    . 


"But  of  such  contradictions  is  made  up  history,  and  of  such  inconsistencies  is 
later  pieced  together  the  judgment  of  mankind.  As  we  all  know,  there  are  two  sides 
to  every  quarrel.  The  greater  the  quarrel,  the"  greater  the  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  who  was  right  and  who  was  wrong.  Though  I  was  three  years  in  Europe, 
at  the  fronts  and  in  the  capitals,  I  am  not  yet  prepared  to  say  just  who  was  entirely 
right  and  who  was  entirely  wrong,  and  I  am  sure  that  I  will  never  encompass 
the  whole  of  the  evidence  sufficiently  well  to  allow  me  to  arrive  at  a  final  conclusion. 
All  I  can  say  now  is  that  none  of  them  was  an  angel.  To  inquire  into  the  culpability 
of  those  held  responsible  for  a  war  is  like  taking  a  sail  upon  the  ocean :  There  is 
one  more  billow,  and  after  bobbing  up  and  down  a  great  deal  you  find,  taking 
your  bearings  by  the  sun,  that  after  all  you  have  not  gotten  very  far — not  as  far 
as  you  thought.  That  seems  to  have  been  the  experience  of  Mr.  Wilson,  when  in 
»  his  political  campaign  in  1916  he  averred  loudly  and  often  that  he  had  not  yet  de- 
cided  who  was  responsible  for  the  European  War. 

"A  great  deal  was  being  said,  just  before  the  Great  War  broke  out,  of  universal 
peace,  disarmament,  the  force  of  International  Law,  arbitration  treaties  and  what 
not.  How  much  is  there  left  of  these  things  today?  Precious  little!  Of  Inter- 
national Law  is  left  the  few  paragraphs  which  the  British  government  incorporated, 
for  purposes  of  its  own,  in  its  Declaration  of  London  Orders  in  Privy  Council, 
No.  2,  or  whatever  the  number  of  the  most  famous  of  these  was.  The  remainder 
of  International  Law  was  dumped  overboard,  but  is  now  being  salvaged  to  once 
once  more  lull  mankind  into  a  false  security. 

"Just  what  is  International  Law?     .     .     . 

"When  you  come  to  examine  it  you  will  find  it  of  as  much  substance  as  the 
soap  bubble,  of  as  much  weight  as  the  British  government  may  deign  to  give  it. 
Today,  at  any  rate,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  jus  gentium.  There  is  today  only  a 
jus  Britannica.  and  a  fool  is  he  who  thinks  otherwise. 

"We  must  bear  in  mind  that  only  the  envoy  extraordinary  and  ambassador 
plenipotentiary  of  the  World  Power  can  do  his  best  in  the  art  of  negotiations, 
to  give  you  the  dictionary  definition  of  diplomacy.  He  can  do  his  best  for  the  reason 
that  whatever  mistake  he  may  make,  and  no  matter  how  and  when,  and  by  whom, 
he  is  found  out,  he  can  finally  cause  his  dear  government  to  call  out  the  army, 
and  the  navy,  and  the  pulpit,  the  press,  the  literary  cutthroat,  the  harlotting  peda- 
gogue and  all  the  other  flunkies  of  authority. 

"There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  able  or  an  unable  diplomatist,  as  the  general 
public  views  it.  By  that  I  mean  that  ability  along  the  lines  of  honesty  has  nothing 
to  do  with  diplomacy.  Able  is  that  diplomatist  whose  armed  forces  can  in  the 
end  prove  him  right;  unable  is  that  diplomatist  whose  armies  and  navy  go  down 
in  defeat.  In  the  one  case  all  intrigue  and  conspiracy  against  the  peace  of 
the  world  is  wiped  out — and  all  mistakes  along  with  it — and  in  the  other  the  per- 
fectly legitimate  methods  of  the  diplomatist  are  paraded  before  the  war-frenzied 
public.  Before  an  ambassador  can  be  successful  he  must  have  behind  him  great 
prestige — prestige  not  of  fine  attributes,  but  of  the  brutal   force  of  arms,  and  if 


"THE  PITFALLS  OF  DIPLOMACY"  407 

^  not  of  the  brutal  force  of  arms,  then  of  the  cruel  will  of  international  capitalism. 
Such  an  ambassador  is  bound  to  be  successful.  He  could  not  fail,  because  the 
weaker  stand  in  awe  of  him.  The  diplomatist  who  does  not  have  these  means  in 
his  hands,  who  does  not  wield  these  dire  forces,  will  always  be  a  failure,  because 
in  diplomacy  it  is  not  sterling  worth  that  counts,  nor  is  mental  superiority  so  great 
an  asset:  The  factor  that  determines  all  in  the  end  is  force — the  size  of  the  armies, 
the  number  of  guns,  the  efficacy  of  blockade,  the  size  of  the  fleet,  and  all  the  other 

\  things  they  use  in  war — not  to  mention  the  capacity  for  prevarication  of  that  grand, 
old  moulder  of  public  opinion — the  press. 

"Nevertheless,  the  poor,  deluded  public  everywhere  prefers  to  stand  in  awe 
of  the  diplomatist,  realizing  little  how  very  ordinary  this  envoy  extraordinary  may 
be,  how  weak  in  mind,  will  and  morals  this  ambassador  plenipotentiary  wp" 
fashioned.  Contrary  to  the  opinions  of  their  admiring  friends  and  the  general 
public,  diplomatists  are  nothing  more  than  human  beings,  and  not  always  very  good 
ones  either.  While  the  granting  of  all  sorts  of  silly  privileges  to  diplomatists  has 
in  the  minds  of  many  elevated  the  ilk  into  a  class  related  to  the  gods,  these  men, 
and  their  women  also,  are  still  subjects  to  all  the  laws  of  nature,  as  presently  I 
will  show  you. 

"Bookwriting  ambassadors  are  omniscient,  omnipotent  and  omnipresent.  T  say 
bookwriting  ambassadors  are  that,  because  when  interviewed  thev  are  protected  against 
their  own  assininity  by  the  interviewing  and  snivelline  scribe  who  weighs  everv 
word  the  great  man  utters.  But  in  writing  a  book  the  ambassador  can  p'ive  his  fancv 
free  rein  and  woe  betide  the  poor  devil  that  happens  across  the  track  of  his  pen. 
According  to  ambassadorial  war  books,  the  government  of  the  U.  S.  had  in  Europe 
bv  far  the  best  diplomatists,  especially  ambassadors.  There  is  no  doubt  about  t^at. 
-'  One  of  them  has  been  knighted  and  is  now  Sir  James  of  the  Black  Wallet.  Sir  James 
is  one  of  the  most  heroic  figures  of  the  Great  War,  and  if  I  make  bold  to  mention 
him  here  at  all,  it  is  with  the  wish  that  his  shadow  mav  never  grow  less.  I 
honestly  believe  that  some  of  the  things  he  did,  and  his  books  are  not  tV«e  least  of 
these,  will  ultimately  do  much  to  improve  the  diplomatice  serviVp  of  the  United 
States.  At  any  rate,  improved  will  be  that  service  to  the  extent  of  Sir  James  having 
made  it  impossible  to  again  serve  himself  his  country. 

^  "The  main  purpose  of  censorship  then  is  to  influence  world  public  opinion.    To 

what  extent  it  is  necessary  to  control  that  opinion  was  shown  again  a  few  weeks 
ago  when  Great  Britain  decided  that  it  would  not  be  well  to  let  the  American  public 
get  news  from  Germany  and  Central  Europe  over  the  wireless.  The  British  govern- 
ment quite  calmly  informed  the  world  that  until  further  notice  all  news  dispatches 
would  have  to  be  sent  by  cable — that  meant  they  would  have  to  get  in  and  out  of 
the  British  cable  offices.  Did  you  hear  an  objection  on  the  part  of  the  administration 
in  Washington?  You  did  not.  Now  as  then  whatever  the  British  government  does 
is  okeh.  London  has  but  to  think  in  order  to  get  action  on  the  part  of  a  govern- 
ment that  is  said  to  be  autonomous  and  independent.  It  is  a  fine  state  of  affairs, 
to  be  sure.  ^    ~^ 

"Now,  I  am  one  of  those  who  object  to  an  alliance  between  this  country  and 
Great  Britain,  but,  conditions  being  what  they  were,  it  would  have  been  the  nart 
of  honorable  men  to  admit  that  there  was  an  understanding  between  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States.  That  applies  still  today.  To  either  admit  that  there  is  such 
an  alliance — a  gentlemen's  understanding  of  long  standing,  as  it  were,  or  to  out-and- 
out  make  such  an  alliance,  would  be  a  good  thing  for  this  world.  It  would  be  an 
honorable  thing,  because  then  the  remainder  of  this  world  could  shane  its  acts 
accordingly.  Do  you  think  that  the  German  government  would  have  been  able  to 
make  some  of  its  mistakes  if  it  had  been  known  in  1915  or  1916.  or  whenever  it 
was,  that  Mr,  Wilson  had  agreed  with  his  friends  in  the  old  country  that  the 
Entente  should  never  lose  this  war  no  matter  who  was  right  and  who  was  wrong? 
Do  you  think  that  the  Central  European  publics,  sheeplike  and  complacent  as  thev 
were,  would  have  allowed  their  governments  to  bring  them  so  close  to  the  brink 
of  extermination?  I  can  say  that  the  people  would  have  seen  to  it  that  peace  would 
have  been  made  in  time— soon  enough  to  leave  at  least  a  little  of  the  substance 


408  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

needed  in  daily  life.  The  fact  is  that  Mr.  Wilson  duped  these  people,  as  later  he 
duped  them  in  his  Fourteen  Points.  While  this  gay  deceiver  made  it  appear  that  he 
was  acting  from  the  position  of  an  American,  he  was  creating  a  situation  which 
in  the  end  would  not  keep  us  out  of  the  war.  And  all  of  this  at  a  time  when  he 
was  running  for  re-election  on  the  slogan :  He  kept  us  out  of  the  war. 

"By  all  means  let  us  have  an  alliance  with  Great  Britain,  if  we  intend  doing  in 
the  future  what  we  have  done  in  the  past.  Let  us  be  honest  about  this  thing,  so 
that  men  everywhere  will  know  exactly  what  they  are  to  expect  of  us.  That  is  quite 
the  least  we  can  do.  It  is  the  very  minimum  required  of  him  who  wants  to  seem  a 
decent  member  in  the  family  of  nations. 

"Of  course,  it  might  even  be  necessary  to  force  Great  Britain  into  an  alliance 
with  us.  I  hope  you  do  not  think  that  we  have  no  alliance  today  because  the  men 
in  Washington  did  not  want  such  an  alliance.  I  have  a  better  opinion  of  your  intelli- 
gence. That  there  is  today  no  written  alliance  between  London  and  Washington  is 
due  entirely  to  the  fact  that  John  Bull  finds  its  more  convenient  not  to  have  such 
an  alliance.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  deepest  pitfall  of  international  machination 
in  recent  years  was  the  gentlemen's  agreement  Wilson  had  with  his  cousins,  once 
removed,  in  London.  When  the  Thunderer  referred  to  Wilson  as  the  best  English- 
man living,  Lord  NorthcliflFe  knew  exactly  what  he  was  saying. 

"Don't  think  that  in  Europe  there  were  no  men  at  all  who  did  not  understand 
this.  There  was  Count  Tisza,  for  instance.  Many  a  time  have  I  discussed  with 
him  the  question  whether  or  no  Wilson  would  go  to  war  on  the  side  of  the  Entente. 
.  .  .  It  is  very  unfortunate  for  the  whole  world  that  in  Berlin  they  were 
stupid  enough  to  believe  Mr.  Wilson  and  his  ambassadors,  Sir  James  and  Colonel 
House.  Had  they  taken  the  advice  of  Count  Tisza  the  war  would  have  ended 
sooner,  I  think,  and  this  world  would  have  been  better  off  by  far.  I  will  say  that 
the  greatest  of  all  the  blunders  made  by  the  men  in  Berlin  is  that  they  for  a  moment 
thought  that  they  could  win  the  war  without  having  to  measure  issues  on  the  field  of 
battle  with  the  United  States.  But  thev  had  learned  little  even  from  that.  When  Mr. 
Wilson  came  out  with  his  Fourteen  Points  Central  Europe  fell  to  its  knees  before 
him  as  it  might  before  another  Messiah.  He  was  looked  upon  as  the  third  in  a 
splendid  constellation :  Washington,  Lincoln  and  Wilson.  Well,  we  know  what  be- 
came of  all  that.  It  all  ended  up  in  the  rare  screed  known  as  the  League  of  Nations 
covenant — a  sort  of  butcher's  scrap  barrel  into  which  the  Big  Four  dumped  all  of 
their  hatred,  avarice  and  foibles,  not  forgetting  a  few  troubles  of  their  own,  as  shown 
by  the  ridiculous  phrases  concerning  labor  problems. 

"By  all  means  let  us  come  in  the  open  with  an  alliance  with  Great  Britain  if 
in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  we  are  to  trot  in  the  dust  of  her  chariot.  Our  fellow- 
men  everywhere  will  then  be  able  to  conduct  themselves  accordingly.  For  instance, 
they  will  never  go  to  war,  hoping  that  we  might  or  would  remain  neutral,  as  the 
surface  of  things  would  indicate.  We  will  lose  nothing  by  dropping  our  mask,  and 
we  will  gain  a  great  deal  by  serving  notice  upon  the  world  that  with  such  an 
alliance  we  cease  to  be  a  snare  to  the  unsuspecting,  a  pitfall  to  the  honest.  Such 
an  open  alliance  would  remove  from  the  present-day  diplomacy  one  of  its  most 
unlovely  aspects." 


INDEX  OF  PERSONNEL 


ABDUL  Hamid,  Sultan,  121,  144,  267. 
CKERMAN,  Charles,  252,  255,  256. 
Aehrenthal,  Count,  54,  72,  162,  268,  297. 
Alexander  I,  Czar,  27,  83. 
Alexander  II,  Czar,  28,  54,  117,  161,  167,  169. 
Alexander  III,  Czar,  29,  31,  34,  54,  144,  161,  170. 
Alexander  of  Battenberg,  161. 
Alexander,  King  of  Serbia,  162,  296. 
Alice,  Princess  of  Hes'se-Darmstadt,  34,  35,  328. 
Antonian  (Mr.  Morgenthau's  Secretary),  127,  133. 
Asquith,  43. 

Archbald  (Newspaper  Correspondent),  304. 
Arz,  General  von,  365. 
Averescu,  General,  220. 

BARCLAY,  Sir  H.,  201,  220. 
ARRfiRE  (Rome),  49,  264,  266. 
Barthou,  83. 

Battenberg,  Prince  Alexander  of,  161. 
Bax-Ironside,  Sir  Henry  G.  O.,  170. 
Bell  (Chicago  Daily  News),  135. 
Below- Saleske,  Baron  von,  75. 
Benckendorf,  Count,  71,  266,  302. 
Benedikt,  Dr.  (Neue  Freie  Presse,  Vienna),  325. 
Benedikt,  Moritz  (Neue  Freie  Presse,  Vienna),  319,  324,  325,  326,  344. 
Bennet,  James  O'Donnell,  103,  252,  254,  256. 
Berchtold,  Count,  54,  56,  67,  72,  162,  297,  298,  308,  365. 
Berry  (Associated  Press),  106,  239. 
Bernstorfif,  Count,  257,  288,  341. 
Bert,  Paul,  29. 
Bertie,  Sir  Francis,  72,  82. 

Bethmann-Hollweg,  IZ,  75,  78,  196,  227,  273,  286,  298,  330,  335. 
Bieberstein,  Baron  von,  2i^. 

409 


410  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Bienaime,  Admiral,  264. 

Bingham,,  Rutherford,  360. 

Bismarck,  Prince,  29,  31,  34,  44,  73,  78,  79,  273. 

Bissing,  General  von,  107. 

Black  George,  59. 

Blondel  (Bucharest),  201,  220. 

Bompard  (Constantinople),  119,  144. 

Boreovic,  General,  365. 

Boris,  Crownprince,  161,  173. 

Bosniakoff  (Sofia),  184. 

Bourchier,  J.  D.,  238. 

Bouton,  Miles  S.,  251. 

Brandl,  Dr.,  (Vienna),  323. 

Branisteanu  (Bucharest),  204. 

Bratianu,  Premier,  178,  200,  206,  209,  215,  219,  220,  223,  226. 

Braun   (Berlin),  49. 

Briand,  Aristide,  83. 

BrousiloflF,  General,  225,  227,  229,  327,  365. 

Brown,  Cyril,  252. 

Bryan,  William  J.,  98,  100,  241,  276,  284,  286,  289,  311,  340. 

Buchanan,  Sir  George,  71,  72,  148,  300,  364. 

Buelow,  Prince,  36,  266,  267. 

Buelow,  Princess  Maria,  266,  267. 

Burian,  Count,  190,  308,  311,  312. 

Bussche-Haddenhausen,  Baron  von  den,  201,  217,  219,  222. 

Buxton  Brothers,  168. 

Byng,  General,  366. 


/^  ADORN  A,  General,  266,  27,  365. 


AILLAUX,  83. 
Campbell-Bannerman,  51. 
Cantacuzene,  Michael,  200. 
Caprivi,   Count,  36. 

Carp,  Peter,  144,  200,  201,  203,  209,  215,  216,  220. 
Carson,  Sir  Edward,  83. 
Cavell,  Edith,  380. 
Charles,  Emperor-King,  227,  324,  328,  329,  330,  331,  332,  333,  352,  353, 

^  356,  365. 
Charles,  King  of  Rumania,  200,  206,  215. 
Churchill,  Winston,  50. 
Clemenceau,  83,  386. 
Cleveland,  President,  37. 


INDEX  OF  PERSONNEL  411 

Cobb,  Irvin,  103. 

Collins,  Robert  M.,  102,  234,  236. 

Colloredo-Mannsfeld,  Count  von,  333,  344,  345,  346,  347,  357,  358. 

Conger,  Seymor  B.,  102,  104,  106,  107,  235,  251,  253. 

Constantin,  King  of  Greece,  246,  267. 

Couche,  Frank  A.,  188. 

C,  S.  L.  (Vienna),  305. 

Crispi,  Premier,  264. 

Cucchi-Boasso,  Signor,  179. 

Czernin,  Count,  201,  220,  222,  227,  308,  324,  330,  333,  335,  336,  337, 

338,  339,  340,  341,  342,  344,  345,  346,  347,  348,  349, 

351,  352,  353,  365. 

DAMON,  THERON,  133,  239,  240. 
ANEFF,  Dr.  (Sofia),  165,  168,  180. 
d'Annunzio,  266,  267. 
David  (Berlin),  49. 
de  Giers,  31,  34,  46. 
de  Giers,  N.  M.,  72,  119,  144. 
de  Hansen  (Paris),  46. 
Delcasse,  M.,  47. 
de  Panafieu,  M.  M.  A.,  170,  179. 
Derocco,  D.  J.,  157,  158. 
Derussi  (Sofia),  179. 
Diaz,  General,  365. 
Diaz,  Porfirio,  199. 
Disraeli,  380. 

Dobrovitch,  Dr.  (Sofia),  173. 
Draga,  Queen  of  Serbia,  162,  296. 
Duckworth,  Admiral,  114. 
Dulles,  Allen  W.,  356,  357. 
Dumba,   Dr.  Alexander,  288,   304,   305,  306. 
Dyke,  Dr.  Henry  van,  22,  95,  96,  97,  98,  99,  100. 

EINSTEIN,  Lewis,  132  ,133,  134,  135,  180,  182,  183,  184,  185,  186, 
DWARD  VII,  39,  42,  43,  44,  45,  46,  48,  49. 
187,  188,  248. 
Elizabeth,  Queen  of  Rumania,  206,  215. 
Elst,  Baron  van  der,  75. 
Emin  Pasha,  356. 
Endress,  Guido,  252,  254. 
Enver  Pasha,  111,  115,  121,  124,  126,  129,  130,  131,  146,  195,  196,  366. 


412  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

FALKENHAYN,  General  von,  224,  225,  320,  327,  365. 
ERDINAND  of  Bulgaria,  161,  162,  166,  173,  174,  180,  365. 
Ferdinand  of  Rumania,  206,  219,  220. 
Filipescu  (Rumania),  200,  202,  209. 
Fischer,  Major  (Constantinople),  130,  239. 
Flotow,  von,  266. 
Flourens,  Gustave,  46. 
Forgatch,  Count,  358. 
Fortesque,  Capt.  Stanley,  136. 
Francis  I,  of  Austria,  27. 
Francis  Joseph,  Emperor,  29,  34,  35,  54,  61,  67,  196,  268,  304,  313,  314, 

331,  364. 
Francis  Ferdinand,  Archduke,  56,  57,  298. 
Frederici,  Major,  250. 
Frederick,  Emperor,  44. 
Frederick  William  III,  27. 
French,  General,  366. 
Fryatt,  Captain,  380. 


GAUNTLETT,  Fred.  J.,  115. 


EORGE,  David  Lloyd,  51. 
George,  Jr.,  Henry,  101. 
George,  King  of  England,  61,  64,  65,  67,  142. 
Georgieff  (Sofia),  175,  184,  189,  248,  249,  250. 

Gerard,  James  W.,  22,  100,  250,  251,  252,  253,  254,  255,  256,  257,  358. 
Ghenadieff  (Sofia),  172. 
Ghiloni,  Frank,  318. 
Gieslingen,  Baron  Giesl  von,  61. 
Giskra,  Baron  von,  67,  96. 
Gogo,  Octavian,  201. 
Goltz  Pasha,  von  der,  36,  123,  195. 
Goschen,  Sir  Edward,  72,  73,  286. 
Grant-Smith,  U.,  190,  191,  192. 
Grew,  Joseph  C,  353,  355,  356,  357,  358,  359. 
Grey,  Sir  Edward,  43,  62,  63,  64,  66,  67,  72,  73,  74,  75,  79,  82,  83,  84, 

120, 242,  243,  266,  280, 282, 299,  300, 302, 366, 
Guechoff,  M.  I.  M.,  116,  117,  153,  164,  165,  166,  167,  168,  169,  173,  180. 

HAASE  (Berlin),  49. 
AIG,  General,  366. 
Haldane,  Viscount,  42,  43,  50,  51,  62. 
Hale,  William  Bayard,  252. 


INDEX  OB^  PERSONNEL  413 

Halil  Bey,  365. 

Hamilton,  Sir  Ian,  137,  140,  141,  147,  148,  152,  366. 

Hansen,  Harry,  103. 

Harriman  (Diplomatic  Secretary),  346. 

Hartwig  (Belgrade),  159,  162. 

Hay,  John,  37. 

Helfferich,  Dr.  Carl,  319. 

Herbst,  Joseph,  248. 

Hersing,  Captain,  192. 

Hibbon,  Paxton,  245,  246. 

Hindenburg,  Field  Marshal,  von,  329,  330,  365. 

Hirst  (Sofia),  184,  185,  186,  187,  188. 

Hotzendorff,  Field  Marshal,  von,  225,  365. 

Hoifman,  President  Swiss  Confederation,  243. 

Hohenlohe,  Prince,  36. 

House,  Colonel,  22,  23,  307. 

Humann,  Capt.,  130,  131,  194,  195,  197. 

ILIESCU,  General  (Rumania),  220. 
MPERIALI,  Marquis,  266. 
Isvolski  (Paris),  23,  54,  71,  72,  144,  146,  162. 

JAGOW,  Herr  von,  30,  72,  73. 
ANSEN,  Colonel  von  (Constantinople),  131. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  86,  96,  98,  283,  289,  293. 
Jekoff,  General  (Bulgaria),  172,  248. 
Joffre,  Marshall,  266. 

Jonescu,  Take  (Bucharest),  200,  201,  202,  204,  205,  209. 
Jonescu,   Toma   (Bucharest),  200. 
Jorga,  Nicolai   (Rumania),  201. 
Judelsohn,   Montefiore,   360. 
Judelsohn,  Mrs.  (Vienna),  360. 
Jusserand  (Washington),  133,  184. 

KERMECKTCHIEFF.  Dr.  Acene  C.  166,  182. 
EYNES,  John  Maynard,  312. 
Kiamil  Bey,  Major,  130. 
Kiderlen-Wachter,  30. 
Kitchener,  Lord,  294,  328,  366. 
Kloeber,  Chas.  E.,  103,  105. 
Koulocheff  (Constantinople),  72^  153,  169. 
Kozeff  (Sofia),  179,  181,  250. 


414  '     "  tHE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Kruger,  Oom  Paul,  32,  45,  170. 

Kiihlmann,  Dr.  Richard  von,  65,  66,  67,  123,  197. 

LAMMASCH,  Dr.  Henry,  324,  344. 
AMSDORFF,  Count,  45. 
Langhorne,  Marshall,  98. 
Unsing,  Robert,  93,  188,  242,  276,  280,  312,  316,  318,  319,  321.  329, 

342,  350. 
Latinovitch  (Budapest),  229. 
Ledebour  (Berlin),  49. 
Ledlie,  J.  C,  278. 
Lee,  Arthur,  42. 
Lewis,  .Roger,  103. 

Lichnowski,  Prince,  64,  65,  66,  67,  74,  75,  262. 
Liebknecht  (Berlin),  49. 

Limpus,  Admiral   (Dardanelles),  118,  139,  212. 
Lippe,  Dr.  (Vienna),  325. 
Listoe,  Soren,    96,  97. 
Lobanoff,  Prince,  35,  46. 
Loudon,  John,  97. 
Lucacin,  Pater  D.,  201. 
Ludendorff,  General,  365. 


li/i  ACH,  Edmund  von,  64. 


ACKENSEN,  Fieldmarshal  von,  173,  175,  225,  365. 
Malinoff,  Alexander,  165,  173,  180. 
Majorescu  (Bucharest),  201. 
Mallet,  Sir  Louis,  119,  125,  143. 
Marghiloman,  Alexander,  60,  144,  200,  201,  203,  205,  206,  207,  208,  209, 

215,  216,  220,  223,  224,  226. 
Marie,  Queen  of  Rumania,  206. 

Martin,  Frederick  Roy,  102,  104,  105,  234,  235,  236,  238,  239,  240,  241,  246. 
Massow,  Colonel  von,  173. 
McCumber,  Senator,  109. 
McCutcheon,  John  T.,  103. 
Mercier,  Cardinal,  106,  107. 
Mertens  Pasha,  134. 
Metternich,  Prince,  28,  335. 
Michaelis  (Sofia),  167,  176. 
Milan,  King  of  Serbia,  162,  296. 
Mille,  Constantin,  201,  203,  204,  205. 
Milner,  Lord,  170.  '] 


INDEX  OF  PERSONNEL  415 

Mirman,  M.  Leon,  368. 

Mohammed  Rechid  Khan  V,  136,  142,  267,  365. 

Mohrenheim,  Baron  von,  46. 

Molkte,  Count  von,  79. 

Momtchiloff,  Ivan,  165. 

Monroe,  President,  86. 

Montlong,  Oscar  von,  323,  331,  332,  349. 

Morgenthau,  St.,  Henry,  116,  118,  119,  125,  126,  127,  128,  129,  130,  131, 

132,  133,  134,  136. 
Morley,  Lord,  51. 

Morton,  Capt.  J.  P.,  128,  129,  130,  131,  132,  135. 
Miiller,  Captain  von,  65,  66,  67,  74. 
Miiller,  Herr  von,  96. 
Muravieff,  Count,  45. 
Murphy,  Dominic  L,  182,  183,  184,  185,  186. 


NAHOUM,  Haim,  126. 
1 


APOLEON  Bonaparte,  27,  227. 
Napoleon  III,  29. 

Nicholaievitch,  Grand  Duke,  70,  71,  78,  209,  300,  328,  365. 
Nicholas  II,  Czar,  31,  34,  35,  46,  60,  61,  63,  67,  70,  71,  161,  162,  167, 

170,  181,  328,  364. 
Northcliffe,  Lord,  177. 
Noske  (Berlin),  49. 

O^BEIRNE  (Sofia),  170,  179,  180. 
BERNDORFF,  Count  Alfred,  176. 
Oppenheimer,  Sir  Francis,  95. 


pAGE,  W.  H.,  242,  243. 


ALIVANOFF,  General,  225,  226,  227,  368. 
Paleologue  (Petrograd),  71,  300. 
Pallavicini,  Marquis,  126. 
Panaretoff,  Stephen,  166. 
Pashitch,  Premier,  61,  158,  162. 
Patterson  (Chicago  Tribune),  105. 
Penfield,  Frederic  C,  23,  190,  305,  318,  331,  332,  333,  334,  335,  342,  343, 

344,  345,  346,  347,  348,  350,  351,  352,  353,  354, 

355,  356,  357,  358,  359,  360. 
Penfield,  Mrs.  F.  C,  355,  357,  358. 
Pesheflf  (Sofia),  172. 
Peter,  King  of  Serbia,  162,  196,  296,  299. 


416  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Pflanzer-Baltin,  General,  365. 
Pichon  (Paris),  83. 
Pinckney,  Mr.,  96. 

Piper,  Captain  (Con.stantinople),  210. 
Poklewski-Koziel,  M.,  201,  205. 
Potiorek,  General,  178,  237. 
Pouncefote,  Lord,  37. 
Pourtales,  Count,  70. 
Protogeroff,  Colonel,  160. 

RADOSLAVOFF,  Dr.,  152,  153,  164,  166,  168,  170,  171,  172,  173, 
174,  175,  176,  179,  180,  246,  250,  365. 
Rappart,  Chevalier  van,  97. 
Ratschkowski  (Paris),  46. 
Reinach,  Joseph,  309. 
Rennenkampf,  General,  167. 
Reventlow,  Count  zu,  254. 
Rheinbaben,  W.  von,  201,  217. 
Roberts,  Elmer,  240. 
Rodd,  Rennel,  265,  266. 
Rogers,  Lindsay,  XXI. 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  309. 

SAIID  Halim  Pasha,  110,  115,  120,  121,  146,  365. 
ALIH  Pasha,  136. 
Salisbury,  Lord,  281. 

Sanders  Pasha,  Liman  von,  118,  124,  140,  195,  366. 
Sarrail,  General,  219,  225. 
Savinski  (Sofia),  179. 
Savoff,  General,  164. 

Sazonoff,  M.,  60,  70,  71,  78,  116,  120,  143,  144,  145,  146,  147,  148,  150, 
151,  158,  159,  162,  163,  164,  174,  175,  181,  207,  208,  209, 
228,  265,  268,  269,  297,  298,  299,  300,  302,  328,  S66,  367. 
Scheidemann  (Berlin)  49. 
Schelking,  de,  23. 

Schellendorflf,  Col.  Bronsart  von,  130. 
Schon,  Baron  von,  23,  74,  75,  79. 
Schuette,  Oswald,  252,  254. 
Scolik,  Charles,  59. 
Sefid  Bey,  130. 

Shamavonian  (Dragoman),  133,  134. 
Shaw,  George  Bernard,  61,  64,  321. 


INDEX  OF  PERSONNEL  417 

Sixtus,  Prince,  350. 

Slavitchi  (Bucharest),  205. 

Souchon,  Admiral,  118,  119,  130. 

Soukhomlinoff,  General,  63,  70,  71,  78. 

Stamboulowski  (Sofia),  165,  173,  180,  365. 

Stancieff,  Dimiter,  183,  249. 

Stanoeivitch,  Dr.  St.,  157,  158,  181. 

Stere,  Rector  (Jassy),  201. 

Stoeger-Steiner,  General,  266,  267. 

Stone,  Melville  E.,  101,  104,  105,  232,  233,  236,  237,  240,  241,  245,  247,  256. 

Stone,  Senator  Wm.  J.,  289,  316. 

Stewart,  Glenn,  360. 

Stuergkh,  Count,  313,  365. 

Swing,  Raymond  E.,  129,  135,  136,  252. 

TALAAT  Bey  (Pasha),  111,  115,  120,  121,  122,  123,  126,  146,  196, 
241,  366. 
Talleyrand,  28. 
Tarler,  G.  Cornell,  129. 

Tarnowski,  Count,  167,  168,  175,  332,  333,  334,  34«,  349,  350. 
Tatarinoff,  Colonel,  201. 
Tcholak-Antitch  ( Sofia ) ,  182. 
Tirpitz,  Great  Admiral,  190,  230,  287. 
Tisza,  Count  Stephen,  222,  224,  229,  232,  307,  308,  309,  310,  311,  312, 

314,  316,  328,  354,  365. 
Theodoroff,  Theodor,  165. 
Todoroff,  General,  219,  365. 
Tontcheff  (Sofia),  172. 
Toretta,  Marquis  de  la,  266. 
Trevelyan  (England),  51. 
Tzigara-Samurcas  (Bucharest),  201. 

UsEDOM  Pasha,  Admiral  von,  134. 

VENIZELOS. 
ESSELKINE,  Admiral,  210. 
Victoria,  Princess  Royal,  44. 
•      Victoria,  Queen,  34,  35,  44,  45,  206,  302. 
Vivian  (England),  51. 

Viviani,  Rene,  72,  73,  74,  75,  79,  82,  83,  84,  120,  300. 
Vopicka,  Chas.  J.,  166,  183,  205,  247. 


418  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

WALDEMAR  of  Denmark,  Prince,  161. 
ALDERSEE,  Count,  36. 
Wangenheim,  Baron  von,  115,  122,  123,  124,  125,  126,  151,  193,  194,  366. 
Washington,  George,  86,  372. 
Weitz,  Paul,  197. 
Weyler,  General,  294. 
Whitlock,  Brand,  351. 
Wied,  Prince  William  of,  296. 
Wiegand,  Carl  H.  von,  252. 
William  I,  Emperor,  29,  31. 

William  II,  Emperor,  31,  34,  35,  36,  39,  42,  44,  45,  61,  64,  67,  68,  70,  71, 
75,  78,  79,  163,  194,  195,  196,  228,  300,  303,  327, 
364,  385. 
Williams,  Captain  R.  H.,  128,  129,  130,  131,  132,  135. 
Wilson,  Hugh  R.,  356. 

Wilson,  Woodrow,  85,  86,  87,  97,  98,  109,  125,  198,  230,  232,  290,  294, 
295,  309,  310,  312,  316,  317,  319,  324,  325,  331,  333, 
334,  338,  340,  342,  344,  349,  350,  351,  352,  355,  369, 
371,  384,  385. 
Wolf-Metternich,  Prince,  193,  194,  195,  196,  197. 

TT^ANUSHKEVITCH,  General,  69,  70,  71. 


USSUF  Izzedin,  Prince,  365. 

ITA,  Empress,  350. 

WIEDENIK,  Baron,  305,  321,  335,  349. 


LIST  OF  DOCUMENTS  QUOTED 


Lichnowski  to  Bethmann-Hollweg,  August  1st,  1914 64 

King  George  to  Emperor  William,  August  1st,  1914 ^     64 

Lichnowski  to  Bethmann-Hollweg,  August  2nd,  1914 65 

Wilson's  Appeal  for  Neutrality,  August  19th,  1914 85 

Order   in   Privy    Council    (The   Declaration   of    London    Order   in 

Council,  No.  2,  1914),  October  29,  1914 88 

Articles  35  and  36  of  The  Declaration  of  London,  1909 89 

United  States  Government  to  British  Government   (General  Protest 

Against  Blockade  Policy  of  the  latter),  October  21st,  1915 93 

See  also 276 

Thomas  Jefferson  to  British  Government   (Mr.  Jefferson's  view  on 

Neutrality),   September   7th,   1793 96 

See  also 283 

Henry  van  Dyke  to  the  Press,  October  8th,  1914 99 

Henry  van  Dyke  to  E.  F.  B.,  Esq.,  October  8th,  1914 99 

Robert  M.  Collins  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship), 

September  8th,  1914 102 

Frederick  Roy  Martin  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship), 

September  16th,  1914 102 

Charles  E.  Kloeber  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship), 

September  19th,  1914 103 

Melville  E.  Stone  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship), 

September  21st,  1914 104 

See  also 233 

Melville  E.  Stone  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  October  5th,  1914  104 
G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Fred.  R.  Martin  (Censorship), 

September  21st,  1914 104 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Chas.  E.  Kloeber  (Censorship),  October  3rd,  1914  105 
G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Fred.  R.  Martin  (Censorship),  January  11th,  1915.    106 
Captain  Humann  to  G.  A.   Schreiner   (Getting  Capts.   Morton  and 
Williams  to  front),  April  18th,  1915 131 

419 


420  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

SazonofF  to  Buchanan  and  Paleologue  (Division  of  Turkey), 

March  4th,  1915   144 

See  also 151 

Sazonoff  to  Isvolski  (Russian  Desires),  March  18th,  1915 146 

Russian  Government  to   Bulgarian   Government   (Demanding  break 

with  Central  Powers),  October,  1915 174 

General  Palivanoff  to  Russian  Government  (Sees  advantages  in  Ru- 
mania's defeat),  November  20th,  1916 225 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Robert  M.  Collins  (Censorship), 

September  3rd,  1914  234 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Fred.  R.  Martin  (Censorship), 

September  15th,  1914 234 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Fred.  R.  Martin  (Censorship), 

September  18th,  1914 235 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Fred.  R.  Martin  (Censorship), 

September  20th,  1914 236 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Melville  E.  Stone  (Censorship)  , 

September  24th,  1914   236 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Melville  E.  Stone  (Censorship), 

December  12th,  1914 237 

Fred.  R.  Martin  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  date  missing 238 

Theron  Damon  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  March  26th,  1915. .  239 
Seymor  B.  Conger  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  April  2nd,  1915  239 
Melville  E.  Stone  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  date  missing. . . .  240 
Fred.  R.  Martin  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  March  14th,  1915  240 

Theron  Damon  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship) 240 

Melville  E.  Stone  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  March  22nd,  1915  241 
State  Department  Circular  to  U.  S.  Diplomatic  Posts, 

November  25th,  1914 242 

British  Foreign  Office  to  W.  H.  Page  (Censorship) 242 

Lansing  to  Page  (London),  September  26th,  1914  (Censorship) 242 

Statement  by  British  Postmaster  General  (Censorship), 

November  2nd,  1914 243 

W.  H.  Page  to  State  Department  (Censorship),  December  2nd,  1914  243 
Direction  Generale  des  Postes,  Telegraphes  et  Telephones  Ottomans 

to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship) ,  May  31st,  1915 244 

Paxton  Hibbon  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship), 

September  25th,  1915 245 


LIST  OF  DOCUMENTS  QUOTED  421 

Fred.  R.  Martin  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  October  9th,  1915'  246 

William  Dreher  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship),  October  8th,  1915.  246 

Fred.  R.  Martin  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Censorship), 

October  10th,   1915    247 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Melville  E.  Stone  (Censorship),  October  3rd,  1915  247 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Charles  J.  Vopicka  (Censorship), 

October  11th,  1915  247 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Dimiter  Stancieff,  April  14th,  1916 249 

Articles  2,  3,  and  4  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris 276 

United  States  Government  to  British  Government   (Protest  against 
restrictions  upon  U.  S.  commerce),  March  30th,  1915 276 

British  Government  to  United  States  Government  ( Enemy  destination 
of  cargoes  is  assumed),  March  1st,  1915 277 

Text  of  Order  in  Council  of  October  20th,  1914 278 

Text  of  Order  in  Council  of  March  30th,  1916 279 

United  States  Government  to  British  Government  (re  Transatlantic 
Co.  vessels),  May  10th,  1916 280 

United  States  Government  to  British  Government   (Protest  against 
British  blacklist),  January  25th,  1915 280 

United  States  Government  to  British  'Government  ( Salisbury  on  food- 
stuffs), December  26th,  1914 281 

British  Government  to  United  States  Government  (Reply  to  above)  282 

United  States  Government  to  German  Government  (Warns  against 
destroying  U.  S.  ships),  February  10th,  1915 282 

United  States  Government  to  British  Government    (Warns  against 
deceptive  use  of  flags),  February  10th,  1915 282 

United    States    Government   to    British    and    German    Governments 
(Submarines,  mines  and  food  compromise),  February  20th,  1915.  .   283 

British  Government  to  United  States  Government  (Reply  to  above)  284 

United  States  Government  to  Austro-Hungarian  Government  (Con- 
traband export  to  South  Africa),  August,  1915 303 

German  Government  to  United  States  Government  ( Promises  warning 
to  ships),  September  1st,  1915 288 

William  J.  Bryan  to  Senator  William  J.  Stone  (Explains  why  and  how 
the  Wilson  administration  is  neutral) 289 

German    Government    to    United    States    Government     (Reply    to 

"Sussex"  note).  May  4th,  1916 314 

United  States  Government  to  German  Government  (Reply  to  above), 
May  8th,  1916 316 


422  THE  CRAFT  SINISTER 

Lansing  to  Ambassador  Penfield  ( Ghiloni  case) 318 

Lansing  to  Ambassador  Penfield,  May  8th,  1916  (Ghiloni  case) 318 

Excerpt  from  Joint  Note  of  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  announc- 
ing resumption  of  submarine  warfare  on  more  rigorous  lines  in 

extended  spheres 342 

Dispatch  to  Associated  Press  by  G.  A.  Schreiner  (Concerning  rupture 

diplomatic  relations),  April  16th,  1917 352 

Proclamation    by    M.    Leon    Mirman    (to    ''Germanic"    Alsatians), 

November  19,  1918 368 

Appeal  to  Mr.  Wilson  by  Alsace-Lorrainers,  January  13th,  1919. . . .  369 

The  Declaration  of  Corfu,  July  20th,  1917 369 

Excerpt  from  Farewell  Address  of  George  Washington 372 

Memorandum  on  Treaty  between  Entente  and  Italy,  May  9th,  1915. .  395 

Treaty  between  Rameses  II  and  Kheta-sar 389 

"League  of  Peace,"  1518-19   394 

Censorship  Regulations  of  Bulgaria,  1915 397 

Associated  Press  dispatch  from  Paris,  September  2nd,  1919 401 

G.  A.  Schreiner  to  Cardinal  Mercier,  January  9th,  1915 402 

Cardinal  Mercier  to  G.  A.  Schreiner  (2) 403 


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